Edward Feser's Blog, page 78

Should a Catholic vote for Ben Carson?

During the second Republican presidential candidates debate in September, Ben Carson said that instead of invading Afghanistan after 9/11, President Bush should have used the “bully pulpit” and
declare[d] that within five to 10 years we will become petroleum independent. The moderate Arab states would have been so concerned about that, they would have turned over Osama bin Laden and anybody else you wanted on a silver platter within two weeks.
Frankly, I think this is a completely nutty position.  I can understand why someone would have opposed the invasion of Iraq.  I can understand why someone would have opposed any attempt at nation-building in Afghanistan, or even a prolonged occupation.  But not even a brief punitive strike?  Not even the hunting down of bin Laden and his gang?  That is what justice would call for, not to mention prudence.  And how exactly was Carson’s policy supposed to have worked?  How is Bush supposed to have guaranteed “petroleum independence”?  What exactly is the mechanism by which moderate Arab states would have gotten the Taliban to turn over bin Laden?  “Half baked” is too kind, and I was amazed that this response didn’t hurt Carson with Republican voters more than it did.
But as to why Carson would take such a position, I’m no longer puzzled.  It was only after the debate that I found out that Carson is a Seventh-Day Adventist.  Given his conservatism on moral and religious issues, I imagine he is fairly devout.  Now, Adventists are not necessarily pacifist, but there is a tendency in that direction, and historically they have opted for conscientious objection to military service.  Carson has to my knowledge not publicly linked his position on matters of war to his Adventism, but it is hardly implausible to suspect that there is a connection.  (Note that I am not supposing that all Adventists would necessarily agree with Carson on this issue.  The point is just that his preference for an extremely mild response to 9/11 is the sort that one might expect from someone having the traditional Adventist attitude toward matters of war and military service.) 

If no one has asked him about this, someone should.  Nor could he reasonably object to such a question.  He has famously said that he would oppose a Muslim becoming president.  Hence he implicitly accepts the principle that a candidate’s religious convictions are relevant to deciding whether or not one should vote for him. 
But leave aside questions about war and foreign policy, important though they are especially in light of current events.  There is another aspect of traditional Adventist doctrine which should be of no less concern to Catholic voters considering whether to vote for Carson, and Protestants too. 
Adventism has always put heavy emphasis on biblical prophecy concerning the last days, and ties this closely to its advocacy of observance of the seventh day rather than Sunday.  Its understanding of these subjects has been shaped by the teachings of Ellen G. White, whom Adventists regard as a prophetess.  White taught that the Catholic Church is the “Whore of Babylon” described in chapter 17 of Revelation, that the papacy is the first “beast” described in chapter 13, and that the United States is the second beast of that chapter.  According to White, in the last days the United States will ally itself with the papacy and on its behalf enforce Sunday observance, which, White claims, will constitute the “mark of the beast” of Revelation.  Protestants will be part of this Catholic-led persecution of seventh-day observers.
Lest you think this all too bizarre to be a fair representation of White’s views, and that they must be susceptible of a more moderate interpretation, consider the summary of White’s teaching given by the recently published Ellen G. White Encyclopedia, edited by Denis Fortin and Jerry Moon, two professors at the Adventists’ own Andrews University.  Its article “Babylon in Eschatology” says:
Ellen White agreed with many of the Reformers in declaring that the “Church of Rome” is “the apostate Babylon”… This interpretation was further expanded in 1843-1844 when Adventists left those Protestant churches that had rejected the first angel’s message and regarded them also as Babylon…
Babylon is characterized by corruption and apostasy… Babylon attempts to control the consciences of individuals and to suppress religious liberty.  It seeks to form a universal confederacy of apostate powers and satanic forces… and persecutes God’s remnant…
[S]he included in Babylon both the Church of Rome… and lamblike Protestantism…
In its article on the “Mark of the Beast,” the Encyclopediasays that:
[White] held that the Sunday legislation that will bring on the mark of the beast will be initiated by the United States, whose example will then be followed by other nations of the world.
And in its article on the “Roman Catholic Church,” it reports:
[White] understood Catholicism as a static institution and further explained how, in spite of showing good will toward Protestants, it will never change… She also expressed concern that Roman Catholicism in America will ultimately attempt to control governments and people’s consciences, as it once did by deceiving Protestants into believing that it has changed.  Hence both Roman Catholicism and an apostatized Protestantism will “clasp hands” “in trampling on the rights of conscience”…
She also makes a distinction between the Catholic Church as a system and individual Roman Catholic believers… Repeatedly she emphasizes that there are many conscientious Christians in the Roman Catholic Church… and that Adventists should avoid antagonizing Catholics by making harsh comments in publications and public meetings…
As these last remarks indicate, White advocated taking a soft rhetorical tone in public and with individual Catholics, but also thought that what she regarded as the essentially satanic character of the Catholic Church as an institution would never change, no matter how gently the Church packaged its own teaching.  Changes to the Catholic Church could never be more than cosmetic. 
White is very clear about all of this in her book TheGreat Controversy , which is worth quoting at some length:
To secure worldly gains and honors, the church was led to seek the favor and support of the great men of earth; and having thus rejected Christ, she was induced to yield allegiance to the representative of Satan -- the bishop of Rome…
[T]he pope… demands the homage of all men. The same claim urged by Satan in the wilderness of temptation, is still urged by him through the Church of Rome, and vast numbers are ready to yield him homage. (p. 50)
[A] movement to enforce Sunday observance is fast gaining ground.
Marvelous in her shrewdness and cunning is the Roman Church.  She can read what is to be. She bides her time, seeing that the Protestant churches are paying her homage in their acceptance of the false sabbath, and that they are preparing to enforce it by the very means which she herself employed in bygone days…  
Its millions of communicants, in every country on the globe, are instructed to hold themselves as bound in allegiance to the pope.  Whatever their nationality or their government, they are to regard the authority of the church as above all other. Though they may take the oath pledging their loyalty to the state, yet back of this lies the vow of obedience to Rome, absolving them from every pledge inimical to her interests…
And let it be remembered, it is the boast of Rome that she never changes. The principles of Gregory VII and Innocent III are still the principles of the Roman Catholic Church.  And had she but the power, she would put them in practice with as much vigor now as in past centuries… Rome is aiming to re-establish her power, to recover her lost supremacy.  Let the principle once be established in the United States, that the church may employ or control the power of the state; that religious observances may be enforced by secular laws; in short, that the authority of church and state is to dominate the conscience, and the triumph of Rome in this country is assured.
God’s word has given warning of the impending danger; let this be unheeded, and the Protestant world will learn what the purposes of Rome really are, only when it is too late to escape the snare. She is silently growing into power… She is piling up her lofty and massive structures, in the secret recesses of which her former persecutions will be repeated. Stealthily and unsuspectedly she is strengthening her forces to further her own ends when the time shall come for her to strike… (pp. 580-81)
End quote.  Now, contemporary Protestants are used to regarding talk of the papacy as the Antichrist and of the Catholic Church as the Whore of Babylon as a throwback to the 16thcentury.  Many of them don’t take it seriously, and find it hard to believe that anyone else still does.  But Adventism, a sect which is historically much more recent and far from the mainstream of Protestantism, takes it very seriously.  And while -- following White’s advice -- Adventists these days sometimes take a softer rhetorical tone when publicly discussing Catholicism, the substance of their view does not seem to have changed.  On its official website, in a statement on its attitude toward Catholicism, the Seventh-Day Adventist Church assures the reader that it “reject[s] bigotry,” but also says:
We cannot erase or ignore the historical record of serious intolerance and even persecution on the part of the Roman Catholic Church. The Roman Catholic system of church governance, based on extra-biblical teachings such as papal primacy, resulted in severe abuses of religious freedom as the church was allied with the state.
Seventh-day Adventists are convinced of the validity of our prophetic views, according to which humanity now lives close to the end of time. Adventists believe, on the basis of biblical predictions, that just prior to the second coming of Christ this earth will experience a period of unprecedented turmoil, with the seventh-day Sabbath as a focal point. In that context, we expect that world religions -- including the major Christian bodies as key players -- will align themselves with the forces in opposition to God and to the Sabbath. Once again the union of church and state will result in widespread religious oppression.
It is not difficult to see in this merely a more gingerly formulated summary of the basic teaching of White’s The Great Controversyquoted above.
A recent article in Adventist Review, a magazine published by the church, argues that the style and substance of Pope Francis and other recent popes should not lead Adventists to give up their traditional views about Catholicism and the papacy.  In fact, says the author, a kinder, gentler papal approach is exactly what we should expect of the beast of Revelation, who deceives precisely by lulling people into trusting him.  He also cites Ellen G. White’s warnings about how “poverty and humility” can mask a “studied aim to secure wealth and power… and the re-establishment of the papal supremacy.”  Another Adventist writer proposes that “Pope Francis represents the first beast of Revelation… whereas President Obama represents the second beast,” and insinuates that Obama might aid Francis in imposing Sunday observance (!)
Needless to say, this is crackpot stuff, and the two articles just quoted from, which seek to uphold traditional Adventist teaching on this subject, indicate that there are these days some Adventists who doubt it.  But it is so deeply woven into Adventist theology that it is hard to see how a consistent Adventist coulddoubt it.  Says the writer of the first article: “If we actually want to revise our interpretation on this point, we would have to dump our complete understanding of end-time events.”  And as a Catholic Answers article on Adventism notes:
There is a "moderate" wing of Adventism that is more open to Catholics as individuals (though still retaining White’s views concerning the papacy). In fact, White was willing to concede that --in the here and now (before the end times) -- some Catholics are saved. She wrote that "there are now true Christians in every church, not excepting the Roman Catholic communion…”
Unfortunately, this one tolerant statement is embedded in hundreds of hostile statements.  While this aspect of her teaching can be played up by her more moderate followers, it is difficult for them to do so, because the whole Adventist milieu in which they exist is anti-Catholic. The group is an eschatology sect, and its central eschatological teaching, other than Christ’s Second Coming, is that the Second Coming will be preceded by a period in which the papacy will enforce Sunday worship on the world.  Everyone who does not accept the papacy’s Sunday worship will be killed; and everyone who does accept the papacy’s Sunday worship will be destroyed by God.
End quote.  Whether and how Adventists might modify their traditional position, though, what Catholic voters need to ask is whether Ben Carson believes all this stuff.  Does he regard the pope as “the representative of Satan” and the first beast of Revelation?  Does he believe that the “Catholic Church as a system” is the “Whore of Babylon”?  Does he believe that the United States will be the second beast of Revelation and that it will at “the end of time” ally itself with the papacy to enforce Sunday observance and otherwise persecute true Christians?  And does he believe that “humanity now lives close to the end of time”?  Does he believe that Catholics, especially the most devout Catholics, “though they may take the oath pledging their loyalty to the state, yet back of this [follow a] vow of obedience to Rome, absolving them from every pledge inimical to her interests”?
Someone should ask Carson these questions, and demand that he answer them directly.  Carson has been asked about his Adventism on at least one occasion.  On the subject of Catholicism, he said: “I love Catholics. My best friend is Catholic. I have several honorary degrees from Catholic universities.”  But that does not answer the relevant questions at all, since as noted above, Adventist doctrine has to do with the Catholic Church as an institution.  That Carson speaks well of individual Catholics, as even White herself did, is no evidence whatsoever that he does not buy into the traditional Adventist doctrines about the “Whore of Babylon,” the beast, etc.  How do we know that Carson isn’t merely following White’s advice to accentuate the positive when making public statements about Catholicism?
Carson was a bit more direct when asked about the traditional Adventist understanding of the last days.  He said:
I think there’s a wide variety of interpretations of that. There’s a lot of persecution of Christians going on already in other parts of world. And some people assume that’s going to happen every place. I’m not sure that’s an appropriate assumption… If you look at what’s going on today with persecution of Christians, particularly in the Middle East, I believe that’s really more what’s being talked about.
This is a little better, but still vague and tentative.  Carson was also vague when asked about his views concerning the last days in another interview, in which he answered:
You could guess that we are getting closer to that. You do have people who have a belief system that sees this apocalyptic phenomenon occurring, and that they’re a part of it, and who would not hesitate to use nuclear weapons if they gain them…
I think we have a chance to certainly do everything that we can to ameliorate the situation, to prevent -- I would always be shooting for peace. You know, I wouldn’t just take a fatalistic view of things.
What Carson ought to do is directly and straightforwardly to answer very specific questions like the ones I put forward above.  Why does this matter?
Let me say first that the reason I think it matters is notbecause views like the ones described above are bound to be “offensive” to Catholics.  There are too many people in public life as it is who whine incessantly about “insensitivity,” and in my view Catholics should not be among them.  To make an issue of Carson’s views about Catholicism merely as a matter of identity politics, hurt feelings, etc. would be a waste of time.
That the views described above are simply nutty is more to the point.  Good judgment is, needless to say, something you want in a president.  If Carson adheres to doctrines like the ones described, that would certainly be evidence that he lacks good judgment.  
But the main point for Catholics is that it is hard to see how a president of the United States who sincerely and deeply believed doctrines like the ones described above could fail to be influenced by those doctrines in a way Catholics should be very concerned about.  If a president seriously believes that the United States is in danger of forming an alliance with the papacy for the purpose of oppressing true Christians (!), and that devout Catholics are bound to follow the papacy in doing so even if they claim loyalty to their country… would such a president even consider appointing a devout Catholic to the Supreme Court, or to any other high office?  If the U.S. government is in tension with the bishops of the Catholic Church -- as it has been in recent years, over the issue of the HHS contraception mandate -- might a president who accepts the doctrines of Ellen G. White not think this is a good thing?  For wouldn’t that make it less likely that the feared oppressive alliance of the United States and the papacy will occur any time soon?   After all, the issue of the HHS contraception mandate more or less affects only the Catholic Church.  Hence mightn’t such a president, when balancing the Adventist concern for religious freedom against the threat to religious freedom he thinks is posed by the Catholic Church, decide that defending the rights of the Catholic Church is not a top priority?  And if such a president seriously believed that we are near the “end of time” and that the papacy will be the gravest threat to true Christians at the end of time, what sort of relations might he have with the Vatican?
Carson has said that for a Muslim to become president, he would “have to reject the tenets of Islam.”  Does Carson reject the tenets of Ellen G. White?  He can hardly blame Catholics for wanting to know.

In Defence of Scholasticism

My article “In Defence of Scholasticism” appears in the 2015 issue of The Venerabile (the cover of which is at left), which is published by the Venerable English College in Rome.  Visit the magazine’s website and consider ordering a copy.  Among the other articles in the issue are a piece on religious liberty by philosopher Thomas Pink and a homily by Cardinal George Pell.  The text of my article, including the editor’s introduction, appears below:Editor's note: Two of the Second Vatican Council's documents dating from 1965 - Gravissimum Educationis, the declaration on Christian education, and Optatam Totius, the decree on priestly training - recommend the doctrine and method of St Thomas Aquinas to the Church. While the former contains an explicit call for "questions... new and current [to be] raised and investigations carefully made according to the example of the doctors of the Church and especially of St Thomas Aquinas" (§10), the latter insists that those training for the priesthood investigate the mysteries of salvation "under the guidance of St Thomas" (§16). As the Church marks the fiftieth anniversary of these conciliar texts, Edward Feser presents a defence of the Scholastic tradition.

Scholasticism is that tradition of thought whose most illustrious representative is St Thomas Aquinas (c.1225-1274) and whose other luminaries include St Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109), Bl. John Duns Scotus (c.1266-1308), and Francisco Suárez (1548-1617), to name only some of the most famous. By no means only a medieval phenomenon, the Scholastic tradition was carried forward in the twentieth century by Neo-Scholastics like Désiré-Joseph Mercier (1851-1926) and Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange (1877-1964), and Neo-Thomists such as Jacques Maritain (1882-1973) and Etienne Gilson (1884-1978).
The theological roots of Scholasticism are Augustinian, and this inheritance brought with it a heavy Neo-Platonic philosophical component. However, the philosophical core of the mature Scholastic tradition, at least in its dominant forms, is Aristotelian, with the surviving Neo-Platonic elements being essentially Aristotelianised.
The Scholastic approachScholastic thinkers emphasise a healthy respect for tradition, in two respects. First, they are keen to uphold Catholic orthodoxy. Second, they tend to regard the history of Western thought from the Pre-Socratics through to the medievals as, more or less, progressive. On this picture, Thales, Heraclitus, Parmenides, the ancient atomists and the other Pre-Socratics introduced most of the key problems and offered erroneous but instructive solutions; Socrates, Plato, and (especially) Aristotle set out at least the outlines of the correct solutions; later thinkers from various traditions - pagans like Plotinus, Christians like Augustine, Jews like Maimonides, and Muslims like Avicenna - built on this foundation and contributed further key insights; and the great Scholastics, such as Aquinas, finally combined these elements in a grand synthesis, preserving what was best, weeding out error, and adding yet further new features of their own. The result was a well worked-out general account of fundamental metaphysical notions such as change, causation, substance, essence, and the like; of lines of argument concerning the existence and nature of God, the immateriality and immortality of the human soul, and the natural law basis of ethics and politics; and, where sacred theology is concerned, an application of these philosophical results to Christian apologetics and to the explication and defence of the doctrines of the Trinity, the Incarnation, the relationship between nature and grace, and so forth.
The history of modern philosophy, on this view, has largely been a gradual unravelling of the fabric of this hard-won achievement, and a return to one or the other of the errors of the Pre-Socratics, whether Parmenides (in the case of Spinoza, say), or Heraclitus (Hume), or the atomists (modern reductionist materialism). The intellectual and moral pathologies of modernity reflect these errors, and their cure requires a recovery of the wisdom of the best classical and medieval thinkers.
It would be a deep mistake, however, to conclude from this that the Scholastic approach is simply dogmatically to reiterate the views of certain favoured writers of the past. As the summary just given itself indicates, the Scholastic attitude is to look for and appropriate truth wherever it is to be found, including a wide variety of non-Christian sources. Nor does the Scholastic suppose that even the greatest thinkers of the past solved every problem, got everything right, or cannot still be improved upon even where they did get things right. The idea is not to keep the tradition frozen in the form it took at some particular point in the past (the thirteenth century, say). The idea is rather that you have to master the tradition before you can improve it, apply it to new and unforeseen problems, and then hand it down to future generations for yet further novel applications and improvements. The Scholastic regards the tradition he inherits as a plant to be cultivated and occasionally pruned, not a fossil to be stuck in a museum display case.
Then there is the heavy emphasis that the Scholastic tradition puts on rational argumentation. It is no good, for the Scholastic - contrary to a common caricature - simply to take a view because Aristotle, or Aquinas, or anyone else happened to hold it. (Aquinas himself famously regarded arguments from human authority as the weakest of all arguments.) One must provide a rational justification, or yield to rival views which do have such a justification. Thus, vigorous disputation has always been a key component of Scholastic method, with arguments from all sides of a particular issue carefully weighed before a position is staked out. And a good Scholastic knows that his own argumentation for that position ought to involve the gathering of evidence from all relevant domains of knowledge, the making of careful distinctions, precision in the use of words, the setting out of explicit lines of reasoning, and adherence to canons of logical inference.
In terms of both its content and its method, then, the Scholastic tradition claims to provide genuine knowledge of a philosophical and theological sort - knowledge which might be systematised and presented in formal treatises, and was so presented in works from Aquinas’s Summa Theologiaedown to the manuals of the Neo-Scholastics. The function of such works is not only to pass on the tradition to future generations of philosophers and theologians, but also to acquaint natural scientists, social scientists, and other academics with the philosophical and theological prolegomena essential for a proper understanding of every other field of inquiry, and to provide the seminarian with the philosophical and theological formation he will need as a priest. The Scholastic manualist thereby aims faithfully to respond to the commission set out in papal documents from Leo XIII’s Aeterni Patris to St. John Paul II’s Fides et Ratio.
Critics of Scholasticism
In the years after Vatican II, however, the Scholastic tradition went into an eclipse from which it is only now starting to emerge. Indeed, that tradition has, among Catholic intellectuals of a certain generation, been routinely denounced - sometimes even by people who are otherwise theologically conservative - with epithets like “Baroque Neo-Scholasticism,” “sawdust Thomism,” and “manualism.” Usually the denunciation is treated as if it were self-evidently correct, with little explanation given of exactly what is wrong with the tradition being denounced. When reasons are given, they are uniformly weak.
Let’s examine them. Recently, Eastern Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart rehearsed some of these stock objections, alleging, on the one hand, that the Thomist tradition from the sixteenth century to the twentieth represents “an impoverished early modern distortion of the medieval synthesis.”1 On the other, he assured his readers that:
Thomas was a dynamically original thinker, who today would make as avid a use of Darwin and Bohr as he did of the Aristotelian science of his day; Thomism, by contrast, is a school, which too often clings to its categories with the pertinacity of a drowning man clutching a shard of flotsam.
Notice first the incoherence of these charges. Hart claims that modern Scholastics have “distorted” or departed from the tradition, but also that they dogmatically “cling to” and “clutch” the tradition. So which is it? Such contradictory accusations are very commonly flung at Neo-Scholasticism. On the one hand, Neo-Scholastics are accused of having an inflexible “fortress mentality,” and of being insufficiently sensitive to the concerns of “modern man” or the findings of modern science. On the other hand, they are accused of selling out to modernity in various ways, such as by adopting a modern “Wolffian rationalist” theory of knowledge, or by adopting a “two-tier” conception of nature and grace that allegedly paved the way for modern philosophical naturalism and even atheism.
Neither sort of accusation is just. For one thing, far from sticking their heads in the sand in the face of modern science, the Neo-Scholastics and Thomists of the twentieth century were keen to show how its discoveries are fully compatible with the Aristotelian-Scholastic tradition (as evidenced by the unjustly neglected works of writers like Vincent Edward Smith, Henry Koren, Andrew van Melsen, James Weisheipl, and William A. Wallace). Nor have modern Scholastics been dogmatic reactionaries in the practical domain. Building on the work of Robert Bellarmine, Francisco Suárez, Francisco de Vitoria, and Bartoloméo de Las Casas, they have argued that Thomistic natural law theory is compatible with individual rights, democracy, and limited government.
The peremptory and sweeping charge that modern Scholastics “distorted” Aquinas is also entirely tendentious and partisan. The usual bases of this charge concern several areas where the interpretation of Aquinas’s views has been a matter of controversy. For example, it is sometimes claimed that Thomas de Vio Cardinal Cajetan (1469-1539) misinterpreted Aquinas’s teaching on the analogous use of language, and passed this misunderstanding on to the later Thomist tradition. But whether this is so is by no means a settled matter - Cajetan has his defenders to this day - and in any case it hardly marks a dividing line between Neo-Scholastics on the one hand and faithful interpreters of Aquinas on the other. (The late philosopher Ralph McInerny was both a Neo-Scholastic admirer of the manualist tradition anda critic of Cajetan.)
The precise grounds for the accusation of “Wolffian rationalism” are seldom made very clear, but the idea seems to be that Neo-Scholastics have somehow departed from Aquinas’s view that knowledge comes through our sensory experience of the real world, and adopted the modern rationalist tendency to ground knowledge in an order of “essences” grasped a priori. But there is nothing in the work of Neo-Scholastics that entails this. It is true that they have made use of the rationalist’s Principle of Sufficient Reason, according to which all reality is intelligible. But far from being a distortion of Aquinas, this principle is itself implicit in Aquinas, insofar as it follows from Aquinas’s well-known thesis that being (objective reality as it is in itself) and truth (reality as it is known to the mind) are convertible with one another, the same thing looked at from different points of view.
As to the allegation that the Neo-Scholastic understanding of nature and grace paved the way for modern atheism, it is simply aimed at a ludicrous caricature. The charge is that Neo-Scholastics sealed off the “two tiers” of nature and grace in a way that made the former entirely self-contained, so that man has no natural need of God. But this presupposes that the Neo-Scholastic understanding of “nature” is the same as that of the modern philosophical naturalist or materialist, which it most definitely is not. On the contrary, for the Neo-Scholastic, rational demonstration of the existence of God is something of which natural reason is capable, and the knowledge and worship of God is thus part of our natural end. Hence the Neo-Scholastic conception of nature, far from entailing atheism, positively excludes it. It is the conception of nature affirmed by thinkers like Aristotle and Plotinus - pagan theists who regarded the knowledge and service of God as the highest end of human life - and not the desiccated “nature” of a David Hume, Friedrich Nietzsche, or Richard Dawkins. What grace adds to nature properly understood is the promise of the supernatural, “face to face” knowledge of God entailed by the beatific vision. And in emphasising the distinction between nature and grace, Neo-Scholastics were concerned, as Pope Pius XII was in Humani Generis, to counter theological doctrines which would “destroy the gratuity of the supernatural order” by collapsing grace into nature. A number of important recent works have begun at last to rehabilitate this unjustly maligned aspect of the Scholastic tradition.2
Where matters of ethics are concerned, the Scholastic tradition has been accused of “legalism.” The suggestion is that a law-oriented approach to morality of the sort one finds in Scholastic manuals is a holdover from the nominalism and voluntarism of William of Ockham. Yet law has always been at least a component of a biblically-grounded morality - Moses was hardly an Ockhamite! - and there is bound to be a “legal” aspect to any workable system of ethics. If there are objective moral principles, we need to know how to apply them to concrete circumstances, and working this out carefully and systematically entails that casuistry will be a part of any serious moral theory. There is also the fact that the priests for whom the ethics manuals were largely written needed guidance in the confessional, as did their penitents. That means, inevitably, a way of telling mortal sin from venial sin - grave matter from light matter, sufficient knowledge from insufficient, sufficient consent from insufficient, in all the areas of human life where we find ourselves tempted. This too inevitably gives rise to a system of casuistry. Hence, it is not Ockhamism or “legalism” that leads us to the approach of the manualists, but rather the very nature of the moral life, and also the Catholic sacrament of penance.
Then there are complaints to the effect that the Scholastic approach is “ahistorical” and “out of date.” Such assertions are ambiguous. Is it being claimed that truth is relative to historical epoch and that in the current era Scholastic claims no longer hold true? If so, then this merely begs the question against the Scholastic, who would deny that truth is or could be relative in this way. Is it merely being claimed instead that Scholastic ideas are no longer as widely accepted as they once were? If so, what does that matter? What counts is whether the ideas in question are true. If they are not true, then that would be enough reason to reject them, and their popularity or lack thereof would be irrelevant. But if they are true, then we ought to defend and promote them, and if contemporary intellectuals do not accept them, then it is their views which ought to change, not those of the Scholastic.
Moreover, the claim that Scholastic ideas are “out of date” in this latter sense is itself out of date. Recent decades have seen a revival of interest in Aristotelian and Thomistic ideas within mainstream academic philosophy. While Aristotelianism and Thomism are still definitely minority positions, they are getting a hearing in contemporary philosophy in a way they have not been since the 1950s.3
Finally, it is often remarked that Scholastic works are too “dry” and “ready-made” in their systematicity, lacking sufficient excitement and creativity. (This alleged dryness is the source of the “sawdust Thomism” epithet.) But the complaint is frivolous. Again, what ultimately matters is whether what such works have to say is true, and whether the ideas they convey really are related to one another in the logical and systematic way in which they are presented. No one objects to textbooks of chemistry or history on the grounds that their orderly and systematic presentation of the facts they discuss makes them too “dry” and “ready-made.” How can anyone who believes the Catholic Faith to be true object to there being manuals or textbooks which present the Church’s doctrine in a similarly systematic way?
The need for Scholasticism
In fact, such manuals are crucially needed, now more than ever. As Catholic theologian R. R. Reno has written regarding the abandonment of Scholastic manuals in recent decades:
The Church is not a community of independent scholars, each pursuing individualised syntheses, however important or enriching these projects might be. The Church needs teachers and priests to build up the faithful. To do this work effectively, the Church needs theologians committed to developing and sustaining a standard theology, a common pattern of thought, a widely used framework for integrating and explaining doctrine…
[T]he Church can no more function like a debating society that happens to meet on Sunday mornings, forever entertaining new hypotheses, than a physics professor can give over the classroom to eager students who want to make progress by way of freewheeling discussions… [B]elievers need a baseline, a communally recognised theology, in order to have an intellectually sophisticated grasp of the truth of the faith…
The collapse of neoscholasticism has not led to [a] new and fuller vision... We need to recover the systematic clarity and comprehensiveness of the neoscholastic synthesis, rightly modified and altered by [later] insights… We need good textbooks… in order to develop an intellectually sophisticated faith.4   
It is no secret that catechesis has collapsed in many parts of the Church, and that outside the Church its doctrines are often dismissed as a hodgepodge of irrational prejudices. The neglect of the Scholastic tradition is a large part of what got us into this mess. Its rediscovery will help to get us out of it.
Endnotes
1 David Bentley Hart, "Romans 8:19-22", First Things, June/July 2015.
2 See e.g. Lawrence Feingold, The Natural Desire to See God according to St. Thomas Aquinas and His Interpreters (Ave Maria, FL: Sapientia Press, 2010); Steven A. Long, Natura Pura: On the Recovery of Nature in the Doctrine of Grace (New York: Fordham University Press, 2010); and Bernard Mulcahy, Aquinas’s Notion of Pure Nature and the Christian Integralism of Henri de Lubac: Not Everything is Grace (New York: Peter Lang, 2011).
3 See e.g. John J. Haldane, ed., Mind, Metaphysics, and Value in the Thomistic and Analytical Traditions (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002); C. Paterson and M.S. Pugh, eds., Analytical Thomism: Traditions in Dialogue (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006); Tuomas E. Tahko, ed., Contemporary Aristotelian Metaphysics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); Ruth Groff and John Greco, eds., Powers and Capacities in Philosophy: The New Aristotelianism (London: Routledge, 2013); Daniel D. Novotný and Lukáš Novák, eds., Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives in Metaphysics(London: Routledge, 2014).
4 R. R. Reno, "Theology After the Revolution", First Things, May 2007.

The Telegraph on Scholastic Metaphysics

At The Daily Telegraph, Christopher Howse kindly calls attention to my book Scholastic Metaphysics , which he describes as follows:

A brilliant new defence of metaphysics… [I]t is a lively read.  The author is Edward Feser, and in 2011 Sir Anthony [Kenny] gave something of a rave review in the TLS to an earlier book by him, The Last Superstition...

Papal fallibility (Updated)

Catholic doctrine on the teaching authority of the pope is pretty clear, but lots of people badly misunderstand it.  A non-Catholic friend of mine recently asked me whether the pope could in theory reverse the Church’s teaching about homosexuality.  Said my friend: “He could just make an ex cathedra declaration to that effect, couldn’t he?”  Well, no, he couldn’t.  That is simply not at all how it works.  Some people think that Catholic teaching is that a pope is infallible not only when making ex cathedra declarations, but in everything he does and says.  That is also simply not the case.  Catholic doctrine allows that popes can make grave mistakes, even mistakes that touch on doctrinal matters in certain ways.Many Catholics know all this, but they often misunderstand papal authority in yet other ways.  Some think that a Catholic is obliged to accept the teaching of a pope only when that teaching is put forward by him as infallible.  That too is not the case.  Contrary to this “minimalist” view, there is much that Catholics have to assent to even though it is not put forward as infallible.  Others think that a Catholic is obliged to agree more or less with every view or decision of a pope regarding matters of theology, philosophy, politics, etc. even when it is not put forward as infallible.  And that too is not the case.  Contrary to this “maximalist” view, there is much to which a Catholic need give only respectful consideration, but not necessarily assent.  As always, Catholic doctrine is balanced, a mean between extremes -- in this case, between these minimalist and maximalist extremes.  But it is also nuanced, and to understand it we need to make some distinctions that are too often ignored.

Papal infallibility
First let’s get clear about infallibility.  The First Vatican Council taught that:
[W]hen the Roman Pontiff speaks ex cathedra, that is, when, in the exercise of his office as shepherd and teacher of all Christians, in virtue of his supreme apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine concerning faith or morals to be held by the whole Church, he possesses, by the divine assistance promised to him in blessed Peter, that infallibility which the divine Redeemer willed his Church to enjoy in defining doctrine concerning faith or morals.  Therefore, such definitions of the Roman Pontiff are of themselves, and not by the consent of the Church, irreformable.
What the Council is describing here is the pope’s exercise of what is called his “extraordinary Magisterium,” as opposed to his “ordinary Magisterium” or everyday teaching activity in the form of homilies, encyclicals, etc.  The passage identifies several conditions for the exercise of this extraordinary Magisterium.  First, the pope must appeal to his supreme teaching authority as the successor of Peter, as opposed to speaking merely as a private theologian, or making off-the-cuff remarks, or the like.  An exercise of the extraordinary Magisterium would, accordingly, typically involve some formal and solemn declaration.  Second, he must be addressing some matter of doctrine concerning faith or morals.  The extraordinary Magisterium doesn’t pertain to purely scientific questions such as how many elements are in the periodic table, political questions such as whether a certain proposed piece of legislation is a good idea, etc.  Third, he must be “defining” some doctrine in the sense of putting it forward as official teaching that is binding on the entire Church.  The extraordinary Magisterium doesn’t pertain to teaching that concerns merely local or contingent circumstances.
But there is a further, crucial condition on such ex cathedra statements.  The First Vatican Council emphasized it in a passage that comes several paragraphs before the one quoted above:
For the Holy Spirit was promised to the successors of Peter not so that they might, by his revelation, make known some new doctrine, but that, by his assistance, they might religiously guard and faithfully expound the revelation or deposit of faith transmitted by the apostles.
Papal teaching, then, including exercises of the extraordinary Magisterium, cannot contradict Scripture, Tradition, or previous binding papal teaching.  Nor can it introduce utter novelties.  Popes have authority only to preserve and interpret what they have received.  They can draw out the implications of previous teaching or clarify it where it is ambiguous. They can make formally binding what was already informally taught.  But they cannot reverse past teaching and they cannot make up new doctrines out of whole cloth. 
Along the same lines, the Second Vatican Council taught, in Dei Verbum , that the Church cannot teach contrary to Scripture:
[T]he living teaching office of the Church… is not above the word of God, but serves it, teaching only what has been handed on, listening to it devoutly, guarding it scrupulously and explaining it faithfully…
Pope Benedict XVI put the point as follows, in a homily of May 7, 2005:
The Pope is not an absolute monarch whose thoughts and desires are law.  On the contrary: the Pope's ministry is a guarantee of obedience to Christ and to his Word.  He must not proclaim his own ideas, but rather constantly bind himself and the Church to obedience to God's Word, in the face of every attempt to adapt it or water it down, and every form of opportunism…
The Pope knows that in his important decisions, he is bound to the great community of faith of all times, to the binding interpretations that have developed throughout the Church's pilgrimage.  Thus, his power is not being above, but at the service of, the Word of God.  It is incumbent upon him to ensure that this Word continues to be present in its greatness and to resound in its purity, so that it is not torn to pieces by continuous changes in usage.
Though the pope’s exercise of his ordinary Magisterium is not always infallible, it can be under certain circumstances.  In particular, it is infallible when the pope officially reaffirms something that was already part of the Church’s infallible teaching on the basis of Scripture and Tradition.  For example, in Ordinatio Sacerdotalis , Pope St. John Paul II reaffirmed traditional teaching to the effect that the Church has no authority to ordain women to the priesthood, and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith thereafter confirmed that this teaching is to be regarded as infallible.  The reason it is to be regarded as infallible is not that the papal document in question constituted an exercise of the extraordinary Magisterium, but rather because of the teaching’s status as part of the constant and universal doctrine of the Church. 
Now, what makes some constant and universal teaching of the Churchinfallible is itself an important topic, but one that is beyond the scope of this post, which is concerned with the teaching authority of the pope, specifically.  Suffice it to emphasize for present purposes that, precisely because exercises of the pope’s ordinary Magisterium are infallible when they merely reaffirm the Church’s own constant and universal teaching, they too do not involve either the reversal of past teaching or the addition of some novelty. 
Papal infallibility, then, is not some magical power by which a pope can transform any old thing he wishes into a truth that all are bound to accept.  It is an extension of the infallibility of the preexisting body of doctrine that it is his job to safeguard, and thus must always be exercised in continuity with that body of doctrine.  Naturally, then, the pope would not be speaking infallibly if he taught something that either had no basis in Scripture, Tradition, or previous magisterial teaching, or contradicted those sources of doctrine.  If it had no such basis, it could be mistaken, and if it contradicted those sources of doctrine, it would be mistaken. 
It is very rare, however, that a pope says something even in his ordinary Magisterium that is manifestly either a sheer novelty or in conflict with existing doctrine.  Popes know that their job is to preserve and apply Catholic teaching, and thus when they say something that isn’t just a straightforward reiteration of preexisting doctrine, they are typically trying to draw out the implications of existing doctrine, to resolve some ambiguity in it, to apply the doctrine to new circumstances, or the like.  If there is some deficiency in such statements, then, it will typically be subtle and take some careful thinking to identify and correct.  There is in Catholic doctrine, therefore, a presumption in favor of what a pope says even in his ordinary non-infallible Magisterium, even if it is a presumption which can be overridden.  Hence the default position for any Catholic must be to assent to such non-infallible teaching.  Or at least that is the default position where that teaching concerns matters of principlevis-à-vis faith and morals -- as opposed to application of principle to contingent concrete circumstances, where judgments about such circumstances are of their nature beyond the special competence of the pope.
Five categories of magisterial statement
So, when must a Catholic assent to some non-infallible papal statement?  When might a Catholic disagree with such a statement?  This is a subject greatly clarified by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (the future Pope Benedict XVI) during his time as Prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith.  Perhaps the most important document in this connection is the 1990 instruction Donum Veritatis: On the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian , though there are also other relevant statements.  Cardinal Avery Dulles has suggested that one can identify four general categories of magisterial statement in Donum Veritatis.  (See Dulles’s essay “The Magisterium and Theological Dissent” in The Craft of Theology .  Cf. also chapter 7 of Dulles’s book Magisterium .)  However, as other statements from Ratzinger indicate, Dulles’s fourth category appears to lump together statements with two different degrees of authority.  When these are distinguished, it is clear that there are really five general categories of magisterial statement.  They are as follows:
1. Statements which definitively put forward divinely revealed truths, or dogmas in the strict sense.  Examples would be the Christological dogmas, the doctrine of original sin, the grave immorality of directly and voluntarily killing an innocent human being, and so forth.  As Dulles notes, according to Catholic teaching, statements in this category must be affirmed by every Catholic with “divine and Catholic faith.”  No legitimate disagreement is possible.
2. Statements which definitively put forward truths which are not revealed, but closely connected with revealed truths.  Examples would be moral teachings such as the immorality of euthanasia, and the teaching that priestly ordination is reserved only to men.  According to Donum Veritatis, statements in this category must be “firmly accepted and held” by all Catholics.  Here too, legitimate disagreement is not possible.
3. Statements which in a non-definitive but obligatory way clarify revealed truths.  Dulles suggests that “the teaching of Vatican II, which abstained from new doctrinal definitions, falls predominantly into this category” (The Craft of Theology, p. 110).  According to Donum Veritatis, statements in this category must be accepted by Catholics with “religious submission of will and intellect.”  Given their non-definitive character, however, the assent due to such statements is not of the absolute kind owed to statements of categories 1 and 2.  The default position is to assent to them, but it is in principle possible that the very strong presumption in their favor can be overridden.  Donum Veritatissays:
The willingness to submit loyally to the teaching of the Magisterium on matters per se not irreformable must be the rule.  It can happen, however, that a theologian may, according to the case, raise questions regarding the timeliness, the form, or even the contents of magisterial interventions.
For this reason,
the possibility cannot be excluded that tensions may arise between the theologian and the Magisterium… If tensions do not spring from hostile and contrary feelings, they can become a dynamic factor, a stimulus to both the Magisterium and theologians to fulfill their respective roles while practicing dialogue…
[A theologian’s] objections could then contribute to real progress and provide a stimulus to the Magisterium to propose the teaching of the Church in greater depth and with a clearer presentation of the arguments.
However, Donum Veritatis also makes it clear that in the normal case even a justifiably doubtful theologian’s further investigations into the matter will eventually result in assent.  The burden of proof is on the doubting theologian to justify his non-assent, and
Such a disagreement could not be justified if it were based solely upon the fact that the validity of the given teaching is not evident or upon the opinion that the opposite position would be the more probable.  Nor, furthermore, would the judgment of the subjective conscience of the theologian justify it because conscience does not constitute an autonomous and exclusive authority for deciding the truth of a doctrine.
Nor, as Donum Veritatis makes clear, could theologians legitimately express their disagreement in these cases with a polemical spirit, or apply political pressure tactics in order to influence the Magisterium, or set themselves up as a counter-Magisterium.
As William May has pointed out, the most plausible scenario in which “theologians [might] raise questions of this kind [would be] when they can appeal to other magisterial teachings that are more certainly and definitively taught with which they think the teaching questioned is incompatible” (An Introduction to Moral Theology, p. 242). 
4. Statements of a prudential sort which require external obedience but not interior assent.  As Dulles notes (Magisterium, p. 94), Cardinal Ratzinger gave as an example of this sort of statement the decisions of the Pontifical Biblical Commission in the early 20thcentury.  Dulles suggests that the Church’s caution about accepting heliocentrism in the 17th century would be another example.  These sorts of statements are “prudential” insofar as they are attempts prudently to apply general principles of faith and morals to contingent concrete circumstances, such as the state of scientific knowledge at a particular point in history.  And there is no guarantee that churchmen, including popes, will make correct judgments about these circumstances or how best to apply general principles to them.  Hence, while Donum Veritatissays that it would be a mistake “to conclude that the Church's Magisterium can be habitually mistaken in its prudential judgments,” nevertheless:
When it comes to the question of interventions in the prudential order, it could happen that some Magisterial documents might not be free from all deficiencies.  Bishops and their advisors have not always taken into immediate consideration every aspect or the entire complexity of a question.
As the examples given indicate, statements of category 4 generally concern what sorts of positions theologians might in their public writing or teaching put forward as consistent with Catholic doctrine.  The concern is that theologians not too rashly publicly endorse some idea which may or may not turn out to be true, but whose relationship to matters of faith and morals is complicated, and where mistakes may damage the faith of non-experts.  Here what is called for is external obedience to the Church’s decisions, but not necessarily assent.  A “reverent silence” might be the most that is called for, though since Donum Veritatis allows that a theologian might in principle legitimately raise questions about category 3 statements, such questions could obviously be legitimate in the case of category 4 statements as well.  Presumably (for example) a theologian could in principle legitimately say: “I will in my scholarship and teaching abide by such-and-such a decision of the Pontifical Biblical Commission.  However, I respectfully request that the Commission reconsider that decision in light of such-and-such considerations.”
The examples of “prudential” judgments which Donum Veritatis addresses and which Dulles discusses in his comments on that document are all judgments which are very closely connected to matters of principle vis-à-vis faith and morals, even if the statements are of a lesser authority than statements of categories 1-3.  For example, the prudential decisions regarding heliocentrism and modern historical-critical methods of biblical scholarship were intended to preclude any rash judgments about the proper interpretation of scripture. 
However, statements by popes and other churchmen which lack any such momentous doctrinal implications, but instead concern issues of politics, economics, and the like, are also often referred to as “prudential judgments,” because they too involve the attempt prudently to apply general principles of faith and morals to contingent concrete circumstances.  Donum Veritatis does not address this sort of judgment and neither does Dulles in his discussion of the document, but it is clear from other statements by Cardinal Ratzinger that it constitutes a fifth category of magisterial teaching:
5. Statements of a prudential sort on matters about which there may be a legitimate diversity of opinion among Catholics.  Examples would be many of the statements made by popes and other churchmen on matters of political controversy, such as war and capital punishment.  Cardinal Ratzinger gave these as specific examples in a 2004 memorandum on the topic “Worthiness to Receive Holy Communion: General Principles,” wherein he stated:
Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia.  For example, if a Catholic were to be at odds with the Holy Father on the application of capital punishment or on the decision to wage war, he would not for that reason be considered unworthy to present himself to receive Holy Communion.  While the Church exhorts civil authorities to seek peace, not war, and to exercise discretion and mercy in imposing punishment on criminals, it may still be permissible to take up arms to repel an aggressor or to have recourse to capital punishment.  There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia. (Emphasis added)
End quote.  Note that Cardinal Ratzinger goes so far as to say that a Catholic may be “at odds with” the pope on the application of capital punishment and the decision to wage war and still be worthy to receive communion -- something he could not have said if it were mortally sinful to disagree with the pope on those issues.  It follows that there is no grave duty to assent to the pope’s statements on those issues.  The cardinal also says that “there may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty,” despite the fact that Pope John Paul II, under whom the Cardinal was serving at the time, made very strong statements against capital punishment and the Iraq war.  It follows that the pope’s statements on those issues were not binding on Catholics even on pain of venial sin, for diversity of opinion could not be “legitimate” if it were even venially sinful to disagree with the pope on these matters.  In the memorandum, Cardinal Ratzinger also explicitly says that Catholic voters and politicians must oppose laws permitting abortion and euthanasia, as well as abstain from Holy Communion if they formally cooperate with these evils.  By contrast, he makes no requirement on the behavior (such as voting) of Catholics who disagree with the pope about capital punishment or the decision to wage war.  So, papal statements on those subjects, unlike category 4 statements, evidently do not require any sort of external obedience much less assent.  Catholics thus owe such statements serious and respectful consideration, but nothing more. 
Contemporary works of theology written by theologians loyal to the Magisterium often recognize this category of prudential statements to which Catholics need not assent.  For example, in his book The Shepherd and the Rock: Origins, Development, and Mission of the Papacy, J. Michael Miller (currently the Archbishop of Vancouver) writes:
John Paul II’s support for financial compensation equal to other kinds of work for mothers who stay at home to take care of their children, or his plea to cancel the debt of Third World nations as a way to alleviate massive poverty, fall into this category.  Catholics are free to disagree with these papal guidelines as ways in which to secure justice.  They can submit to debate alternative practical solutions, provided that they accept the moral principles which the pope propounds in his teaching. (p. 175)
Germain Grisez suggests that there are five sorts of cases in which assent is not required (The Way of the Lord Jesus, Vol. 2, p. 49).  The first would be cases in which popes and other churchmen are not addressing matters of faith and morals.  The second are cases where they are addressing matters of faith and morals, but speaking merely as individual believers or private theologians rather than in an official capacity.  The third sort of case would be when they are teaching in an official capacity, but in a tentative way.  The fourth are cases where popes or other churchmen put forward non-binding arguments for a teaching which is itself binding on Catholics.  The fifth sort of case is when they are putting forward merely disciplinary directives with which a Catholic might legitimately disagree even if he has to follow them.
It is perhaps worth noting that the works just cited are works bearing the Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur.  The reason this is worth noting, and the reason it is also worth emphasizing the significance of Cardinal Ratzinger’s memorandum, is that certain Catholic writers have a tendency to accuse fellow Catholics who disagree with papal statements on matters of political controversy of being “dissenters.” For example, it is sometimes claimed that any Catholic who is consistently “pro-life” will not only agree with papal statements condemning abortion and euthanasia, but will also agree with papal statements criticizing capital punishment or the war in Iraq, or endorsing certain economic policies.  The suggestion is that Catholics who reject the Church’s teaching on abortion and euthanasia are “left-wing dissenters” and Catholics who disagree with recent papal statements on capital punishment, the war in Iraq, or specific economic policies are “right-wing dissenters” -- as if both sides are engaged in disobedience to the Church, and disobedience of the same sort.
At best this reflects serious theological ignorance.  At worst it is intellectually dishonest and demagogic.  A Catholic who disagrees with the Church’s teaching on abortion or euthanasia is rejecting a category 1 or category 2 magisterial statement -- something that is never permitted.  But a Catholic who disagrees with what recent popes have said about capital punishment, the war in Iraq, or specific economic policies is disagreeing with category 5 statements -- something that the Church herself holds to be permissible.  Hence, Catholics who condemn their fellow Catholics for disagreeing with category 5 statements are themselves the ones who are out of sync with what the Church teaches -- not to mention exhibiting a lack of justice and charity. 
Papal error
Since the Church allows that Catholics can under certain circumstances legitimately disagree with statements of category 3, not to mention statements of categories 4 and 5, Catholic teaching thereby implies that it is possible for popes to be mistaken when making statements falling under any of these categories.  It is even possible for a pope to be mistaken in a more radical way if, outside the context of his extraordinary Magisterium, he says something inconsistent with a statement of category 1 or category 2.  And it is possible for a pope to fall into error in other ways, such as by carrying out unwise policies or exhibiting immorality in his personal life.  Indeed, short of binding the Church to heresy, it is possible for a pope to do grave harm to the Church.  As Cardinal Ratzinger once said when asked whether the Holy Spirit plays a role in the election of popes:
I would not say so in the sense that the Holy Spirit picks out the Pope, because there are too many contrary instances of popes the Holy Spirit would obviously not have picked.  I would say that the Spirit does not exactly take control of the affair, but rather like a good educator, as it were, leaves us much space, much freedom, without entirely abandoning us. Thus the Spirit’s role should be understood in a much more elastic sense, not that he dictates the candidate for whom one must vote. Probably the only assurance he offers is that the thing cannot be totally ruined. (Quoted in John Allen, Conclave: The Politics, Personalities, and Process of the Next Papal Election)
Here are some examples of popes who have erred, in some cases in an extremely serious way:
St. Peter (d. c. 64): As if to warn the Church in advance that popes are infallible only within limits, the first pope was allowed to fall into serious error.  Before the crucifixion, he denied Christ.  On another occasion he avoided eating with Gentile converts lest he offend the more hardline Jewish Christians, leading St. Paul famously to rebuke him.  Says the Catholic Encyclopedia :
As this action was entirely opposed to the principles and practice of Paul, and might lead to confusion among the converted pagans, this Apostle addressed a public reproach to St. Peter, because his conduct seemed to indicate a wish to compel the pagan converts to become Jews and accept circumcision and the Jewish law… Paul, who rightly saw the inconsistency in the conduct of Peter and the Jewish Christians, did not hesitate to defend the immunity of converted pagans from the Jewish Law.
Pope St. Victor I (189-98): Western and Eastern Christians had long disagreed over the date on which Easter should be celebrated.  Though earlier popes had tolerated this difference, St. Victor tried to force the issue and excommunicated several Eastern bishops over the matter.  For this excessive severity and departure from previous papal policy, he was criticized by St. Irenaeus. 
Pope St. Marcellinus (296-304): During a persecution of Christians, Emperor Diocletian ordered the surrender of sacred books and the offering of sacrifice to the gods.  It is said that a fearful St. Marcellinus complied, and later repented of having done so.  Historians disagree about whether this actually occurred.  However, as the Catholic Encyclopedia says:
On the other hand it is remarkable, that in the Roman “Chronograph” whose first edition was in 336, the name of this pope alone is missing, while all other popes from Lucius I onwards are forthcoming…
[I]t must indeed be admitted that in certain circles at Rome the conduct of the pope during the Diocletian persecution was not approved… It is possible that Pope Marcellinus was able to hide himself in a safe place of concealment in due time, as many other bishops did.  But it is also possible that at the publication of the edict he secured his own immunity; in Roman circles this would have been imputed to him as weakness, so that his memory suffered thereunder, and he was on that account omitted… from the “Chronograph”…
Pope Liberius (352-366): With the Arian heresy having been endorsed by many bishops, and under pressure from the emperor, Pope Liberius acquiesced in the excommunication of the staunchly orthodox St. Athanasius and agreed to an ambiguous theological formula.  He later repented of his weakness, but he would be the first pope not to be venerated as a saint.
Pope Honorius I (625-638): Pope Honorius at least implicitly accepted the Monothelite heresy, was condemned for this by his successor Pope St. Agatho, and criticized by Pope St. Leo for being at least negligent.  Though his actions are in no way incompatible with papal infallibility -- Honorius was not putting forward a would-be ex cathedra definition -- they caused grave damage by providing fodder for critics of the papacy.  As the Catholic Encyclopedia says: “It is clear that no Catholic has the right to defend Pope Honorius.  He was a heretic, not in intention, but in fact…”
Pope Stephen VI (896-897): In the notorious “cadaver synod” -- an event which some historians consider the low point of the papacy -- Pope Stephen exhumed the corpse of his predecessor Pope Formosus, dressed it in papal vestments and placed it on a throne, put it on trial for alleged violations of church law (see the illustration above), found it guilty and declared all of Formosus’s acts while pope null and void, then had the corpse flung into the Tiber.  Formosus’s supporters later deposed Stephen and put him in jail, where he was strangled.
Pope John XII (955-964): E. R. Chamberlin, in his book The Bad Popes, describes the character of Pope John XII as follows:
In his relationship with the Church, John seems to have been urged toward a course of deliberate sacrilege that went far beyond the casual enjoyment of sensual pleasures.  It was as though the dark element in his nature goaded him on to test the utmost extents of his power, a Christian Caligula whose crimes were rendered particularly horrific by the office he held.  Later, the charge was specifically made against him that he turned the Lateran into a brothel; that he and his gang violated female pilgrims in the very basilica of St. Peter; that the offerings of the humble laid upon the altar were snatched up as casual booty.
He was inordinately fond of gambling, at which he invoked the names of those discredited gods now universally regarded as demons.  His sexual hunger was insatiable -- -- a minor crime in Roman eyes.  What was far worse was that the casual occupants of his bed were rewarded not with casual gifts of gold but of land. (pp. 43-44).
Of his demise, J. N. D. Kelly writes in The Oxford Dictionary of Popes: “[H]e suffered a stroke, allegedly while in bed with a married woman, and a week later he died.”
Pope Benedict IX (1032-44; 1045; 1047-8): Benedict IX was elected through bribes paid by his father.  Kelly tells us that “his personal life, even allowing for exaggerated reports, was scandalously violent and dissolute.”  The Catholic Encyclopedia judges : “He was a disgrace to the Chair of Peter.”
Pope John XXII (1316-34): Pope John XXII taught the heterodox view that the souls of the blessed do not see God immediately after death, but only at the resurrection -- a version of what is called the “soul sleep” theory.  For this he was severely criticized by the theologians of his day, and later recanted this view.  As with Honorius, John’s actions were not incompatible with papal infallibility -- he expressed the view in a sermon rather than by way of issuing a formal doctrinal statement.  But as James Hitchcock judges in his History of the Catholic Church, “this remains the clearest case in the history of the Church of a possibly heretical pope” (p. 215).
Pope Urban VI (1378-89): Urban is described by the Catholic Encyclopedia as an “inconstant and quarrelsome” man whose “whole reign was a series of misadventures.”  The cardinals attempted to replace him with another pope, Clement VII -- beginning the infamous forty-year-long Great Western Schism, in which at first these two men, and later a third man, all claimed the papal throne.  Theologians, and even saints, were divided on the controversy.  St. Catherine of Siena was among the saints who supported Urban, while St. Vincent Ferrer is among the saints who supported Clement.
Pope Alexander VI (1492-1503): This Borgia pope, who had many children by his mistresses, notoriously used the papal office to advance the interests of his family.
Pope Leo X (1513-21): Leo X is the pope who is famously said to have remarked: “Let us enjoy the papacy since God has given it to us.”  Says the Catholic Encyclopedia :
[T]he phrase illustrates fairly the pope's pleasure-loving nature and the lack of seriousness that characterized him.  He paid no attention to the dangers threatening the papacy, and gave himself up unrestrainedly to amusements, that were provided in lavish abundance.  He was possessed by an insatiable love of pleasure, that distinctive trait of his family. Music, the theatre, art, and poetry appealed to him as to any pampered worldling.
Leo was pope during the time of Luther’s revolt, with which he did not deal wisely.  The Catholic Encyclopedia continues:
[When we] turn to the political and religious events of Leo's pontificate… the bright splendour that diffuses itself over his literary and artistic patronage, is soon changed to deepest gloom. His well-known peaceable inclinations made the political situation a disagreeable heritage, and he tried to maintain tranquillity by exhortations, to which, however, no one listened…
The only possible verdict on the pontificate of Leo X is that it was unfortunate for the Church… Von Reumont says pertinently -- “Leo X is in great measure to blame for the fact that faith in the integrity and merit of the papacy, in its moral and regenerating powers, and even in its good intentions, should have sunk so low that men could declare extinct the old true spirit of the Church.”
Further examples could be given, but these suffice to show how very gravely popes can err when they are not exercising their extraordinary Magisterium.  And if popes can err gravely even on matters touching on doctrine and the governance of the Church, it goes without saying that they can err gravely with respect to matters of politics, science, economics, and the like.  As Cardinal Raphael Merry del Val wrote in his 1902 book The Truth of Papal Claims:
Great as our filial duty of reverence is towards what ever [the pope] may say, great as our duty of obedience must be to the guidance of the Chief Shepherd, we do not hold that every word of his is infallible, or that he must always be right.  Much less do we dream of teaching that he is infallible, or in any degree superior to other men, when he speaks on matters that are scientific, or historical, or political, or that he may not make mistakes of judgment in dealing with contemporary events, with men and things. (p. 19)
[E]ven to-day a Bishop might… expostulate with a Pope, who, in his judgment, might be acting in a way which was liable to mislead those under his own charge… The hypothesis is quite conceivable, and in no way destroys or diminishes the supremacy of the Pope. (p. 74)
And as theologian Karl Adam wrote in his 1935 book The Spirit of Catholicism:
[T]he men through whom God's revelation is mediated on earth are by the law of their being conditioned by the limitations of their age.  And they are conditioned also by the limitations of their individuality. Their particular temperament, mentality, and character are bound to color, and do color, the manner in which they dispense the truth and grace of Christ… So it may happen, and it must happen, that pastor and flock, bishop, priest, and layman are not always worthy mediators and recipients of God's grace, and that the infinitely holy is sometimes warped and distorted in passing through them. Wherever you have men, you are bound to have a restricted outlook and narrowness of judgment.  For talent is rare, and genius comes only when God calls it.  Eminent popes, bishops of great spiritual force, theologians of genius, priests of extraordinary graces and devout layfolk: these must be, not the rule, but the exception…  The Church has from God the guarantee that she will not fall into error regarding faith or morals; but she has no guarantee whatever that every act and decision of ecclesiastical authority will be excellent and perfect.  Mediocrity and even defects are possible.  (pp. 248-9)
That popes are fallible in the ways that they are is as important for Catholics to keep in mind as the fact that popes are infallible when speaking ex cathedra.  Many well-meaning Catholics have forgotten this truth, or appear to want to suppress it.  When recent popes have said or done strange or even manifestly unwise things, these apologists have refused to admit it.  They have tied themselves in logical knots trying to show that the questionable statement or action is perfectly innocent, or even conveys some deep insight, if only we would be willing to see it.  Had Catholic bloggers and pop apologists been around in previous ages, some of them would no doubt have been assuring their readers that the Eastern bishops excommunicated by Pope Victor must have had it coming and that St. Irenaeus should have kept silent; or that Pope Stephen was trying to teach us some profound spiritual truth with the cadaver synod if only we would listen; or that Liberius, Honorius, and John XXII were really deepening our understanding of doctrine rather than confusing the faithful. 
This kind of “spin doctoring” only makes those engaging in it look ridiculous.  Worse, it does grave harm to the Church and to souls.  It makes Catholicism appear Orwellian, as if a pope can by fiat make even sheer novelties and reversals of past teaching somehow a disguised passing on of the deposit of faith.  Catholics who cannot bear such cognitive dissonance may have their faith shaken.  Non-Catholics repulsed by such intellectual dishonesty will wrongly judge that to be a Catholic one must become a shill.
The sober truth is that Christ sometimes lets his Vicar err, only within definite limits but sometimes gravely.  Why?  In part because popes, like all of us, have free will.  But in part, precisely to show that (as Cardinal Ratzinger put it) “the thing cannot be totally ruined” -- not even by a pope.  Once more to quote the Catholic Encyclopedia, in its judgment about the outcome of the Great Western Schism:
Gregorovius, whom no one will suspect of exaggerated respect for the papacy… writes: “A temporal kingdom would have succumbed thereto; but the organization of the spiritual kingdom was so wonderful, the ideal of the papacy so indestructible, that this, the most serious of schisms, served only to demonstrate its indivisibility”… From a widely different standpoint de Maistre holds the same view: “This scourge of contemporaries is for us an historical treasure.  It serves to prove how immovable is the throne of St. Peter.  What human organization would have withstood this trial?”

UPDATE: The esteemed Dr. Edward Peters, canon lawyer extraordinaire, kindly comments on my article at his blog.  He argues that, contrary to what I implied in my post, John Paul II’s Ordinatio Sacerdotalis did indeed constitute an exercise of the extraordinary Magisterium.  He makes a strong case. 

Papal fallibility

Catholic doctrine on the teaching authority of the pope is pretty clear, but lots of people badly misunderstand it.  A non-Catholic friend of mine recently asked me whether the pope could in theory reverse the Church’s teaching about homosexuality.  Said my friend: “He could just make an ex cathedra declaration to that effect, couldn’t he?”  Well, no, he couldn’t.  That is simply not at all how it works.  Some people think that Catholic teaching is that a pope is infallible not only when making ex cathedra declarations, but in everything he does and says.  That is also simply not the case.  Catholic doctrine allows that popes can make grave mistakes, even mistakes that touch on doctrinal matters in certain ways.Many Catholics know all this, but they often misunderstand papal authority in yet other ways.  Some think that a Catholic is obliged to accept the teaching of a pope only when that teaching is put forward by him as infallible.  That too is not the case.  Contrary to this “minimalist” view, there is much that Catholics have to assent to even though it is not put forward as infallible.  Others think that a Catholic is obliged to agree more or less with every view or decision of a pope regarding matters of theology, philosophy, politics, etc. even when it is not put forward as infallible.  And that too is not the case.  Contrary to this “maximalist” view, there is much to which a Catholic need give only respectful consideration, but not necessarily assent.  As always, Catholic doctrine is balanced, a mean between extremes -- in this case, between these minimalist and maximalist extremes.  But it is also nuanced, and to understand it we need to make some distinctions that are too often ignored.

Papal infallibility
First let’s get clear about infallibility.  The First Vatican Council taught that:
[W]hen the Roman Pontiff speaks ex cathedra, that is, when, in the exercise of his office as shepherd and teacher of all Christians, in virtue of his supreme apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine concerning faith or morals to be held by the whole Church, he possesses, by the divine assistance promised to him in blessed Peter, that infallibility which the divine Redeemer willed his Church to enjoy in defining doctrine concerning faith or morals.  Therefore, such definitions of the Roman Pontiff are of themselves, and not by the consent of the Church, irreformable.
What the Council is describing here is the pope’s exercise of what is called his “extraordinary Magisterium,” as opposed to his “ordinary Magisterium” or everyday teaching activity in the form of homilies, encyclicals, etc.  The passage identifies several conditions for the exercise of this extraordinary Magisterium.  First, the pope must appeal to his supreme teaching authority as the successor of Peter, as opposed to speaking merely as a private theologian, or making off-the-cuff remarks, or the like.  An exercise of the extraordinary Magisterium would, accordingly, typically involve some formal and solemn declaration.  Second, he must be addressing some matter of doctrine concerning faith or morals.  The extraordinary Magisterium doesn’t pertain to purely scientific questions such as how many elements are in the periodic table, political questions such as whether a certain proposed piece of legislation is a good idea, etc.  Third, he must be “defining” some doctrine in the sense of putting it forward as official teaching that is binding on the entire Church.  The extraordinary Magisterium doesn’t pertain to teaching that concerns merely local or contingent circumstances.
But there is a further, crucial condition on such ex cathedra statements.  The First Vatican Council emphasized it in a passage that comes several paragraphs before the one quoted above:
For the Holy Spirit was promised to the successors of Peter not so that they might, by his revelation, make known some new doctrine, but that, by his assistance, they might religiously guard and faithfully expound the revelation or deposit of faith transmitted by the apostles.
Papal teaching, then, including exercises of the extraordinary Magisterium, cannot contradict Scripture, Tradition, or previous binding papal teaching.  Nor can it introduce utter novelties.  Popes have authority only to preserve and interpret what they have received.  They can draw out the implications of previous teaching or clarify it where it is ambiguous. They can make formally binding what was already informally taught.  But they cannot reverse past teaching and they cannot make up new doctrines out of whole cloth. 
Along the same lines, the Second Vatican Council taught, in Dei Verbum , that the Church cannot teach contrary to Scripture:
[T]he living teaching office of the Church… is not above the word of God, but serves it, teaching only what has been handed on, listening to it devoutly, guarding it scrupulously and explaining it faithfully…
Pope Benedict XVI put the point as follows, in a homily of May 7, 2005:
The Pope is not an absolute monarch whose thoughts and desires are law.  On the contrary: the Pope's ministry is a guarantee of obedience to Christ and to his Word.  He must not proclaim his own ideas, but rather constantly bind himself and the Church to obedience to God's Word, in the face of every attempt to adapt it or water it down, and every form of opportunism…
The Pope knows that in his important decisions, he is bound to the great community of faith of all times, to the binding interpretations that have developed throughout the Church's pilgrimage.  Thus, his power is not being above, but at the service of, the Word of God.  It is incumbent upon him to ensure that this Word continues to be present in its greatness and to resound in its purity, so that it is not torn to pieces by continuous changes in usage.
Though the pope’s exercise of his ordinary Magisterium is not always infallible, it can be under certain circumstances.  In particular, it is infallible when the pope officially reaffirms something that was already part of the Church’s infallible teaching on the basis of Scripture and Tradition.  For example, in Ordinatio Sacerdotalis , Pope St. John Paul II reaffirmed traditional teaching to the effect that the Church has no authority to ordain women to the priesthood, and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith thereafter confirmed that this teaching is to be regarded as infallible.  The reason it is to be regarded as infallible is not that the papal document in question constituted an exercise of the extraordinary Magisterium, but rather because of the teaching’s status as part of the constant and universal doctrine of the Church. 
Now, what makes some constant and universal teaching of the Churchinfallible is itself an important topic, but one that is beyond the scope of this post, which is concerned with the teaching authority of the pope, specifically.  Suffice it to emphasize for present purposes that, precisely because exercises of the pope’s ordinary Magisterium are infallible when they merely reaffirm the Church’s own constant and universal teaching, they too do not involve either the reversal of past teaching or the addition of some novelty. 
Papal infallibility, then, is not some magical power by which a pope can transform any old thing he wishes into a truth that all are bound to accept.  It is an extension of the infallibility of the preexisting body of doctrine that it is his job to safeguard, and thus must always be exercised in continuity with that body of doctrine.  Naturally, then, the pope would not be speaking infallibly if he taught something that either had no basis in Scripture, Tradition, or previous magisterial teaching, or contradicted those sources of doctrine.  If it had no such basis, it could be mistaken, and if it contradicted those sources of doctrine, it would be mistaken. 
It is very rare, however, that a pope says something even in his ordinary Magisterium that is manifestly either a sheer novelty or in conflict with existing doctrine.  Popes know that their job is to preserve and apply Catholic teaching, and thus when they say something that isn’t just a straightforward reiteration of preexisting doctrine, they are typically trying to draw out the implications of existing doctrine, to resolve some ambiguity in it, to apply the doctrine to new circumstances, or the like.  If there is some deficiency in such statements, then, it will typically be subtle and take some careful thinking to identify and correct.  There is in Catholic doctrine, therefore, a presumption in favor of what a pope says even in his ordinary non-infallible Magisterium, even if it is a presumption which can be overridden.  Hence the default position for any Catholic must be to assent to such non-infallible teaching.  Or at least that is the default position where that teaching concerns matters of principlevis-à-vis faith and morals -- as opposed to application of principle to contingent concrete circumstances, where judgments about such circumstances are of their nature beyond the special competence of the pope.
Five categories of magisterial statement
So, when must a Catholic assent to some non-infallible papal statement?  When might a Catholic disagree with such a statement?  This is a subject greatly clarified by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (the future Pope Benedict XVI) during his time as Prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith.  Perhaps the most important document in this connection is the 1990 instruction Donum Veritatis: On the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian , though there are also other relevant statements.  Cardinal Avery Dulles has suggested that one can identify four general categories of magisterial statement in Donum Veritatis.  (See Dulles’s essay “The Magisterium and Theological Dissent” in The Craft of Theology .  Cf. also chapter 7 of Dulles’s book Magisterium .)  However, as other statements from Ratzinger indicate, Dulles’s fourth category appears to lump together statements with two different degrees of authority.  When these are distinguished, it is clear that there are really five general categories of magisterial statement.  They are as follows:
1. Statements which definitively put forward divinely revealed truths, or dogmas in the strict sense.  Examples would be the Christological dogmas, the doctrine of original sin, the grave immorality of directly and voluntarily killing an innocent human being, and so forth.  As Dulles notes, according to Catholic teaching, statements in this category must be affirmed by every Catholic with “divine and Catholic faith.”  No legitimate disagreement is possible.
2. Statements which definitively put forward truths which are not revealed, but closely connected with revealed truths.  Examples would be moral teachings such as the immorality of euthanasia, and the teaching that priestly ordination is reserved only to men.  According to Donum Veritatis, statements in this category must be “firmly accepted and held” by all Catholics.  Here too, legitimate disagreement is not possible.
3. Statements which in a non-definitive but obligatory way clarify revealed truths.  Dulles suggests that “the teaching of Vatican II, which abstained from new doctrinal definitions, falls predominantly into this category” (The Craft of Theology, p. 110).  According to Donum Veritatis, statements in this category must be accepted by Catholics with “religious submission of will and intellect.”  Given their non-definitive character, however, the assent due to such statements is not of the absolute kind owed to statements of categories 1 and 2.  The default position is to assent to them, but it is in principle possible that the very strong presumption in their favor can be overridden.  Donum Veritatissays:
The willingness to submit loyally to the teaching of the Magisterium on matters per se not irreformable must be the rule.  It can happen, however, that a theologian may, according to the case, raise questions regarding the timeliness, the form, or even the contents of magisterial interventions.
For this reason,
the possibility cannot be excluded that tensions may arise between the theologian and the Magisterium… If tensions do not spring from hostile and contrary feelings, they can become a dynamic factor, a stimulus to both the Magisterium and theologians to fulfill their respective roles while practicing dialogue…
[A theologian’s] objections could then contribute to real progress and provide a stimulus to the Magisterium to propose the teaching of the Church in greater depth and with a clearer presentation of the arguments.
However, Donum Veritatis also makes it clear that in the normal case even a justifiably doubtful theologian’s further investigations into the matter will eventually result in assent.  The burden of proof is on the doubting theologian to justify his non-assent, and
Such a disagreement could not be justified if it were based solely upon the fact that the validity of the given teaching is not evident or upon the opinion that the opposite position would be the more probable.  Nor, furthermore, would the judgment of the subjective conscience of the theologian justify it because conscience does not constitute an autonomous and exclusive authority for deciding the truth of a doctrine.
Nor, as Donum Veritatis makes clear, could theologians legitimately express their disagreement in these cases with a polemical spirit, or apply political pressure tactics in order to influence the Magisterium, or set themselves up as a counter-Magisterium.
As William May has pointed out, the most plausible scenario in which “theologians [might] raise questions of this kind [would be] when they can appeal to other magisterial teachings that are more certainly and definitively taught with which they think the teaching questioned is incompatible” (An Introduction to Moral Theology, p. 242). 
4. Statements of a prudential sort which require external obedience but not interior assent.  As Dulles notes (Magisterium, p. 94), Cardinal Ratzinger gave as an example of this sort of statement the decisions of the Pontifical Biblical Commission in the early 20thcentury.  Dulles suggests that the Church’s caution about accepting heliocentrism in the 17th century would be another example.  These sorts of statements are “prudential” insofar as they are attempts prudently to apply general principles of faith and morals to contingent concrete circumstances, such as the state of scientific knowledge at a particular point in history.  And there is no guarantee that churchmen, including popes, will make correct judgments about these circumstances or how best to apply general principles to them.  Hence, while Donum Veritatissays that it would be a mistake “to conclude that the Church's Magisterium can be habitually mistaken in its prudential judgments,” nevertheless:
When it comes to the question of interventions in the prudential order, it could happen that some Magisterial documents might not be free from all deficiencies.  Bishops and their advisors have not always taken into immediate consideration every aspect or the entire complexity of a question.
As the examples given indicate, statements of category 4 generally concern what sorts of positions theologians might in their public writing or teaching put forward as consistent with Catholic doctrine.  The concern is that theologians not too rashly publicly endorse some idea which may or may not turn out to be true, but whose relationship to matters of faith and morals is complicated, and where mistakes may damage the faith of non-experts.  Here what is called for is external obedience to the Church’s decisions, but not necessarily assent.  A “reverent silence” might be the most that is called for, though since Donum Veritatis allows that a theologian might in principle legitimately raise questions about category 3 statements, such questions could obviously be legitimate in the case of category 4 statements as well.  Presumably (for example) a theologian could in principle legitimately say: “I will in my scholarship and teaching abide by such-and-such a decision of the Pontifical Biblical Commission.  However, I respectfully request that the Commission reconsider that decision in light of such-and-such considerations.”
The examples of “prudential” judgments which Donum Veritatis addresses and which Dulles discusses in his comments on that document are all judgments which are very closely connected to matters of principle vis-à-vis faith and morals, even if the statements are of a lesser authority than statements of categories 1-3.  For example, the prudential decisions regarding heliocentrism and modern historical-critical methods of biblical scholarship were intended to preclude any rash judgments about the proper interpretation of scripture. 
However, statements by popes and other churchmen which lack any such momentous doctrinal implications, but instead concern issues of politics, economics, and the like, are also often referred to as “prudential judgments,” because they too involve the attempt prudently to apply general principles of faith and morals to contingent concrete circumstances.  Donum Veritatis does not address this sort of judgment and neither does Dulles in his discussion of the document, but it is clear from other statements by Cardinal Ratzinger that it constitutes a fifth category of magisterial teaching:
5. Statements of a prudential sort on matters about which there may be a legitimate diversity of opinion among Catholics.  Examples would be many of the statements made by popes and other churchmen on matters of political controversy, such as war and capital punishment.  Cardinal Ratzinger gave these as specific examples in a 2004 memorandum on the topic “Worthiness to Receive Holy Communion: General Principles,” wherein he stated:
Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia.  For example, if a Catholic were to be at odds with the Holy Father on the application of capital punishment or on the decision to wage war, he would not for that reason be considered unworthy to present himself to receive Holy Communion.  While the Church exhorts civil authorities to seek peace, not war, and to exercise discretion and mercy in imposing punishment on criminals, it may still be permissible to take up arms to repel an aggressor or to have recourse to capital punishment.  There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia. (Emphasis added)
End quote.  Note that Cardinal Ratzinger goes so far as to say that a Catholic may be “at odds with” the pope on the application of capital punishment and the decision to wage war and still be worthy to receive communion -- something he could not have said if it were mortally sinful to disagree with the pope on those issues.  It follows that there is no grave duty to assent to the pope’s statements on those issues.  The cardinal also says that “there may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty,” despite the fact that Pope John Paul II, under whom the Cardinal was serving at the time, made very strong statements against capital punishment and the Iraq war.  It follows that the pope’s statements on those issues were not binding on Catholics even on pain of venial sin, for diversity of opinion could not be “legitimate” if it were even venially sinful to disagree with the pope on these matters.  In the memorandum, Cardinal Ratzinger also explicitly says that Catholic voters and politicians must oppose laws permitting abortion and euthanasia, as well as abstain from Holy Communion if they formally cooperate with these evils.  By contrast, he makes no requirement on the behavior (such as voting) of Catholics who disagree with the pope about capital punishment or the decision to wage war.  So, papal statements on those subjects, unlike category 4 statements, evidently do not require any sort of external obedience much less assent.  Catholics thus owe such statements serious and respectful consideration, but nothing more. 
Contemporary works of theology written by theologians loyal to the Magisterium often recognize this category of prudential statements to which Catholics need not assent.  For example, in his book The Shepherd and the Rock: Origins, Development, and Mission of the Papacy, J. Michael Miller (currently the Archbishop of Vancouver) writes:
John Paul II’s support for financial compensation equal to other kinds of work for mothers who stay at home to take care of their children, or his plea to cancel the debt of Third World nations as a way to alleviate massive poverty, fall into this category.  Catholics are free to disagree with these papal guidelines as ways in which to secure justice.  They can submit to debate alternative practical solutions, provided that they accept the moral principles which the pope propounds in his teaching. (p. 175)
Germain Grisez suggests that there are five sorts of cases in which assent is not required (The Way of the Lord Jesus, Vol. 2, p. 49).  The first would be cases in which popes and other churchmen are not addressing matters of faith and morals.  The second are cases where they are addressing matters of faith and morals, but speaking merely as individual believers or private theologians rather than in an official capacity.  The third sort of case would be when they are teaching in an official capacity, but in a tentative way.  The fourth are cases where popes or other churchmen put forward non-binding arguments for a teaching which is itself binding on Catholics.  The fifth sort of case is when they are putting forward merely disciplinary directives with which a Catholic might legitimately disagree even if he has to follow them.
It is perhaps worth noting that the works just cited are works bearing the Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur.  The reason this is worth noting, and the reason it is also worth emphasizing the significance of Cardinal Ratzinger’s memorandum, is that certain Catholic writers have a tendency to accuse fellow Catholics who disagree with papal statements on matters of political controversy of being “dissenters.” For example, it is sometimes claimed that any Catholic who is consistently “pro-life” will not only agree with papal statements condemning abortion and euthanasia, but will also agree with papal statements criticizing capital punishment or the war in Iraq, or endorsing certain economic policies.  The suggestion is that Catholics who reject the Church’s teaching on abortion and euthanasia are “left-wing dissenters” and Catholics who disagree with recent papal statements on capital punishment, the war in Iraq, or specific economic policies are “right-wing dissenters” -- as if both sides are engaged in disobedience to the Church, and disobedience of the same sort.
At best this reflects serious theological ignorance.  At worst it is intellectually dishonest and demagogic.  A Catholic who disagrees with the Church’s teaching on abortion or euthanasia is rejecting a category 1 or category 2 magisterial statement -- something that is never permitted.  But a Catholic who disagrees with what recent popes have said about capital punishment, the war in Iraq, or specific economic policies is disagreeing with category 5 statements -- something that the Church herself holds to be permissible.  Hence, Catholics who condemn their fellow Catholics for disagreeing with category 5 statements are themselves the ones who are out of sync with what the Church teaches -- not to mention exhibiting a lack of justice and charity. 
Papal error
Since the Church allows that Catholics can under certain circumstances legitimately disagree with statements of category 3, not to mention statements of categories 4 and 5, Catholic teaching thereby implies that it is possible for popes to be mistaken when making statements falling under any of these categories.  It is even possible for a pope to be mistaken in a more radical way if, outside the context of his extraordinary Magisterium, he says something inconsistent with a statement of category 1 or category 2.  And it is possible for a pope to fall into error in other ways, such as by carrying out unwise policies or exhibiting immorality in his personal life.  Indeed, short of binding the Church to heresy, it is possible for a pope to do grave harm to the Church.  As Cardinal Ratzinger once said when asked whether the Holy Spirit plays a role in the election of popes:
I would not say so in the sense that the Holy Spirit picks out the Pope, because there are too many contrary instances of popes the Holy Spirit would obviously not have picked.  I would say that the Spirit does not exactly take control of the affair, but rather like a good educator, as it were, leaves us much space, much freedom, without entirely abandoning us. Thus the Spirit’s role should be understood in a much more elastic sense, not that he dictates the candidate for whom one must vote. Probably the only assurance he offers is that the thing cannot be totally ruined. (Quoted in John Allen, Conclave: The Politics, Personalities, and Process of the Next Papal Election)
Here are some examples of popes who have erred, in some cases in an extremely serious way:
St. Peter (d. c. 64): As if to warn the Church in advance that popes are infallible only within limits, the first pope was allowed to fall into serious error.  Before the crucifixion, he denied Christ.  On another occasion he avoided eating with Gentile converts lest he offend the more hardline Jewish Christians, leading St. Paul famously to rebuke him.  Says the Catholic Encyclopedia :
As this action was entirely opposed to the principles and practice of Paul, and might lead to confusion among the converted pagans, this Apostle addressed a public reproach to St. Peter, because his conduct seemed to indicate a wish to compel the pagan converts to become Jews and accept circumcision and the Jewish law… Paul, who rightly saw the inconsistency in the conduct of Peter and the Jewish Christians, did not hesitate to defend the immunity of converted pagans from the Jewish Law.
Pope St. Victor I (189-98): Western and Eastern Christians had long disagreed over the date on which Easter should be celebrated.  Though earlier popes had tolerated this difference, St. Victor tried to force the issue and excommunicated several Eastern bishops over the matter.  For this excessive severity and departure from previous papal policy, he was criticized by St. Irenaeus. 
Pope St. Marcellinus (296-304): During a persecution of Christians, Emperor Diocletian ordered the surrender of sacred books and the offering of sacrifice to the gods.  It is said that a fearful St. Marcellinus complied, and later repented of having done so.  Historians disagree about whether this actually occurred.  However, as the Catholic Encyclopedia says:
On the other hand it is remarkable, that in the Roman “Chronograph” whose first edition was in 336, the name of this pope alone is missing, while all other popes from Lucius I onwards are forthcoming…
[I]t must indeed be admitted that in certain circles at Rome the conduct of the pope during the Diocletian persecution was not approved… It is possible that Pope Marcellinus was able to hide himself in a safe place of concealment in due time, as many other bishops did.  But it is also possible that at the publication of the edict he secured his own immunity; in Roman circles this would have been imputed to him as weakness, so that his memory suffered thereunder, and he was on that account omitted… from the “Chronograph”…
Pope Liberius (352-366): With the Arian heresy having been endorsed by many bishops, and under pressure from the emperor, Pope Liberius acquiesced in the excommunication of the staunchly orthodox St. Athanasius and agreed to an ambiguous theological formula.  He later repented of his weakness, but he would be the first pope not to be venerated as a saint.
Pope Honorius I (625-638): Pope Honorius at least implicitly accepted the Monothelite heresy, was condemned for this by his successor Pope St. Agatho, and criticized by Pope St. Leo for being at least negligent.  Though his actions are in no way incompatible with papal infallibility -- Honorius was not putting forward a would-be ex cathedra definition -- they caused grave damage by providing fodder for critics of the papacy.  As the Catholic Encyclopedia says: “It is clear that no Catholic has the right to defend Pope Honorius.  He was a heretic, not in intention, but in fact…”
Pope Stephen VI (896-897): In the notorious “cadaver synod” -- an event which some historians consider the low point of the papacy -- Pope Stephen exhumed the corpse of his predecessor Pope Formosus, dressed it in papal vestments and placed it on a throne, put it on trial for alleged violations of church law (see the illustration above), found it guilty and declared all of Formosus’s acts while pope null and void, then had the corpse flung into the Tiber.  Formosus’s supporters later deposed Stephen and put him in jail, where he was strangled.
Pope John XII (955-964): E. R. Chamberlin, in his book The Bad Popes, describes the character of Pope John XII as follows:
In his relationship with the Church, John seems to have been urged toward a course of deliberate sacrilege that went far beyond the casual enjoyment of sensual pleasures.  It was as though the dark element in his nature goaded him on to test the utmost extents of his power, a Christian Caligula whose crimes were rendered particularly horrific by the office he held.  Later, the charge was specifically made against him that he turned the Lateran into a brothel; that he and his gang violated female pilgrims in the very basilica of St. Peter; that the offerings of the humble laid upon the altar were snatched up as casual booty.
He was inordinately fond of gambling, at which he invoked the names of those discredited gods now universally regarded as demons.  His sexual hunger was insatiable -- -- a minor crime in Roman eyes.  What was far worse was that the casual occupants of his bed were rewarded not with casual gifts of gold but of land. (pp. 43-44).
Of his demise, J. N. D. Kelly writes in The Oxford Dictionary of Popes: “[H]e suffered a stroke, allegedly while in bed with a married woman, and a week later he died.”
Pope Benedict IX (1032-44; 1045; 1047-8): Benedict IX was elected through bribes paid by his father.  Kelly tells us that “his personal life, even allowing for exaggerated reports, was scandalously violent and dissolute.”  The Catholic Encyclopedia judges : “He was a disgrace to the Chair of Peter.”
Pope John XXII (1316-34): Pope John XXII taught the heterodox view that the souls of the blessed do not see God immediately after death, but only at the resurrection -- a version of what is called the “soul sleep” theory.  For this he was severely criticized by the theologians of his day, and later recanted this view.  As with Honorius, John’s actions were not incompatible with papal infallibility -- he expressed the view in a sermon rather than by way of issuing a formal doctrinal statement.  But as James Hitchcock judges in his History of the Catholic Church, “this remains the clearest case in the history of the Church of a possibly heretical pope” (p. 215).
Pope Urban VI (1378-89): Urban is described by the Catholic Encyclopedia as an “inconstant and quarrelsome” man whose “whole reign was a series of misadventures.”  The cardinals attempted to replace him with another pope, Clement VII -- beginning the infamous forty-year-long Great Western Schism, in which at first these two men, and later a third man, all claimed the papal throne.  Theologians, and even saints, were divided on the controversy.  St. Catherine of Siena was among the saints who supported Urban, while St. Vincent Ferrer is among the saints who supported Clement.
Pope Alexander VI (1492-1503): This Borgia pope, who had many children by his mistresses, notoriously used the papal office to advance the interests of his family.
Pope Leo X (1513-21): Leo X is the pope who is famously said to have remarked: “Let us enjoy the papacy since God has given it to us.”  Says the Catholic Encyclopedia :
[T]he phrase illustrates fairly the pope's pleasure-loving nature and the lack of seriousness that characterized him.  He paid no attention to the dangers threatening the papacy, and gave himself up unrestrainedly to amusements, that were provided in lavish abundance.  He was possessed by an insatiable love of pleasure, that distinctive trait of his family. Music, the theatre, art, and poetry appealed to him as to any pampered worldling.
Leo was pope during the time of Luther’s revolt, with which he did not deal wisely.  The Catholic Encyclopedia continues:
[When we] turn to the political and religious events of Leo's pontificate… the bright splendour that diffuses itself over his literary and artistic patronage, is soon changed to deepest gloom. His well-known peaceable inclinations made the political situation a disagreeable heritage, and he tried to maintain tranquillity by exhortations, to which, however, no one listened…
The only possible verdict on the pontificate of Leo X is that it was unfortunate for the Church… Von Reumont says pertinently -- “Leo X is in great measure to blame for the fact that faith in the integrity and merit of the papacy, in its moral and regenerating powers, and even in its good intentions, should have sunk so low that men could declare extinct the old true spirit of the Church.”
Further examples could be given, but these suffice to show how very gravely popes can err when they are not exercising their extraordinary Magisterium.  And if popes can err gravely even on matters touching on doctrine and the governance of the Church, it goes without saying that they can err gravely with respect to matters of politics, science, economics, and the like.  As Cardinal Raphael Merry del Val wrote in his 1902 book The Truth of Papal Claims:
Great as our filial duty of reverence is towards what ever [the pope] may say, great as our duty of obedience must be to the guidance of the Chief Shepherd, we do not hold that every word of his is infallible, or that he must always be right.  Much less do we dream of teaching that he is infallible, or in any degree superior to other men, when he speaks on matters that are scientific, or historical, or political, or that he may not make mistakes of judgment in dealing with contemporary events, with men and things. (p. 19)
[E]ven to-day a Bishop might… expostulate with a Pope, who, in his judgment, might be acting in a way which was liable to mislead those under his own charge… The hypothesis is quite conceivable, and in no way destroys or diminishes the supremacy of the Pope. (p. 74)
And as theologian Karl Adam wrote in his 1935 book The Spirit of Catholicism:
[T]he men through whom God's revelation is mediated on earth are by the law of their being conditioned by the limitations of their age.  And they are conditioned also by the limitations of their individuality. Their particular temperament, mentality, and character are bound to color, and do color, the manner in which they dispense the truth and grace of Christ… So it may happen, and it must happen, that pastor and flock, bishop, priest, and layman are not always worthy mediators and recipients of God's grace, and that the infinitely holy is sometimes warped and distorted in passing through them. Wherever you have men, you are bound to have a restricted outlook and narrowness of judgment.  For talent is rare, and genius comes only when God calls it.  Eminent popes, bishops of great spiritual force, theologians of genius, priests of extraordinary graces and devout layfolk: these must be, not the rule, but the exception…  The Church has from God the guarantee that she will not fall into error regarding faith or morals; but she has no guarantee whatever that every act and decision of ecclesiastical authority will be excellent and perfect.  Mediocrity and even defects are possible.  (pp. 248-9)
That popes are fallible in the ways that they are is as important for Catholics to keep in mind as the fact that popes are infallible when speaking ex cathedra.  Many well-meaning Catholics have forgotten this truth, or appear to want to suppress it.  When recent popes have said or done strange or even manifestly unwise things, these apologists have refused to admit it.  They have tied themselves in logical knots trying to show that the questionable statement or action is perfectly innocent, or even conveys some deep insight, if only we would be willing to see it.  Had Catholic bloggers and pop apologists been around in previous ages, some of them would no doubt have been assuring their readers that the Eastern bishops excommunicated by Pope Victor must have had it coming and that St. Irenaeus should have kept silent; or that Pope Stephen was trying to teach us some profound spiritual truth with the cadaver synod if only we would listen; or that Liberius, Honorius, and John XXII were really deepening our understanding of doctrine rather than confusing the faithful. 
This kind of “spin doctoring” only makes those engaging in it look ridiculous.  Worse, it does grave harm to the Church and to souls.  It makes Catholicism appear Orwellian, as if a pope can by fiat make even sheer novelties and reversals of past teaching somehow a disguised passing on of the deposit of faith.  Catholics who cannot bear such cognitive dissonance may have their faith shaken.  Non-Catholics repulsed by such intellectual dishonesty will wrongly judge that to be a Catholic one must become a shill.
The sober truth is that Christ sometimes lets his Vicar err, only within definite limits but sometimes gravely.  Why?  In part because popes, like all of us, have free will.  But in part, precisely to show that (as Cardinal Ratzinger put it) “the thing cannot be totally ruined” -- not even by a pope.  Once more to quote the Catholic Encyclopedia, in its judgment about the outcome of the Great Western Schism:
Gregorovius, whom no one will suspect of exaggerated respect for the papacy… writes: “A temporal kingdom would have succumbed thereto; but the organization of the spiritual kingdom was so wonderful, the ideal of the papacy so indestructible, that this, the most serious of schisms, served only to demonstrate its indivisibility”… From a widely different standpoint de Maistre holds the same view: “This scourge of contemporaries is for us an historical treasure.  It serves to prove how immovable is the throne of St. Peter.  What human organization would have withstood this trial?”

Augustine on semantic indeterminacy

St. Augustine’s dialogue The Teacher is concerned with the nature of language.  There are several passages in it which address what twentieth-century philosophers call semantic indeterminacy -- the way that utterances, behavior, and other phenomena associated with the use of language are inherently indeterminate or ambiguous between different possible interpretations.  Let’s take a look.  (I will be quoting from the Peter King translation, in Arthur Hyman, James J. Walsh, and Thomas Williams, eds., Philosophy in the Middle Ages, Third edition .)The dialogue is a discussion between Augustine and his son Adeodatus.  Several pages into the dialogue (at pp. 12-13 of the text I’m quoting from) the question arises whether someone can teach another person the meaning of a term without using words or other signs such as pointing one’s finger at a thing, but instead just by way of one’s actions:

Augustine: What if I should ask you what walking is, and you were then to get up and do it? Wouldn't you be using the thing itself to teach me, rather than using words or any other signs?
Adeodatus: I admit that this is the case.  I'm embarrassed not to have seen a point so obvious.  On this basis, too, thousands of things now occur to me that can be exhibited through themselves rather than through signs: for example, eating, drinking, sitting, standing, shouting, and countless others.
Augustine: Now do this: tell me-- if I were completely ignorant of the meaning of the word ['walking'] and were to ask you what walking is while you were walking, how would you teach me?
Adeodatus: I would do it a little bit more quickly, so that after your question you would be prompted by something novel [in my behavior], and yet nothing would take place other than what was to be shown.
Augustine: Don’t you know that walking is one thing and hurryinganother?  A person who is walking doesn't necessarily hurry, and a person who is hurrying doesn't necessarily walk.  We speak of 'hurrying' in writing and in reading and in countless other matters.  Hence given that after my question you kept on doing what you were doing, [only] faster, I might have thought walking was precisely hurrying -- for you added that as something new -- and for that reason I would have been misled.
End quote.  Augustine’s point is that the behavior Adeodatus was proposing as a means by which one may teach the meaning of the word “walking” is ambiguous or indeterminate between the meaning walking and the meaning hurrying.  Nothing in the behavior considered by itself could determine one or the other interpretation, nor could it rule out yet some other possible interpretation (such as jogging or being chased).  Hence exhibiting that behavior could not by itself teach the meaning of “walking.” 
Later on in the discussion (at p. 27), Adeodatus himself reinforces the point with a related but slightly different example:
Adeodatus: … For example, if anyone should ask me what it is to walk while I was resting or doing something else, as was said, and I should attempt to teach him what he asked about without a sign, by immediately walking, how shall I guard against his thinking that it's just the amount of walking I have done?  He'll be mistaken if he thinks this.  He'll think that anyone who walks farther than I have, or not as far, hasn't walked at all.
Here the idea is that by walking six feet (say), you will have done something the meaning of which is indeterminate between the meaning walking and the meaning walking six feet.  Hence if someone asked you what “walking” means and you carried out that behavior in response, he could come away thinking “Oh, ‘walking’ means moving in that manner” but he could also come away thinking “Oh, ‘walking’ means moving six feet in that manner.”  Again, since nothing in the behavior considered by itself could determine either of these meanings or some other meaning altogether, the behavior by itselfcould not suffice to explain the meaning.
Now, you might think that further behavior that provides a larger context for the walking, or gestures, or explanatory utterances, or other elements of the overall communicative environment, will suffice to determine which meaning is intended.  Augustine himself doesn’t pursue the issue much further, but in fact the indeterminacy would afflict all of these other aspects of the situation as well.  This is the lesson of examples like W. V. Quine’s “gavagai” example in Word and Object, and Saul Kripke’s “quus” example in Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language.  Any collectionof behaviors, gestures, and even utterances, will be ambiguous or indeterminate between different possible interpretations.  Even if you add to the story mental pictures and other images, including inner “utterances” -- as when you call before your mind the way that the sentence “By this action I mean walking!” sounds, or the way the sentence looks when written out -- that will not solve the problem, because those images are also susceptible of different possible interpretations. 
So what does determine what is meant?  Here different philosophers offer different answers.  Quine famously held that there simply is no fact of the matter about what one means by an utterance.  Meaning is not merely indeterminate from behaviorand the like, but indeterminate full stop.  But Augustine would not agree with that.  (Which is a good thing, since, as I have argued many times, the idea that there is no determinate meaning full stop is incoherent.  See e.g. my article “Kripke, Ross, and the Immaterial Aspects of Thought,” reprinted in Neo-Scholastic Essays .) 
But again, what does determinate what is meant?  Augustine doesn’t say much about that -- the indeterminacy of semantic content is not his main topic, after all -- other than to note (at p. 28) that someone who is intelligent will be able to figure out the significance of behavior, a judgment with which his son concurs:
Adeodatus: … If he is sufficiently intelligent, he’ll know the whole of what it is to walk, once walking has been illustrated by a few steps.
Of course this is, in one sense, not terribly informative or helpful, even though it is perfectly true that we typically are able to figure out what is meant by different behaviors.  For we want to know exactly how an intelligent person figures out the meaning, given that the behavior is inherently ambiguous or indeterminate in its significance. 
In another way, though, Augustine’s point is a deep one, even if this is best seen by reading it as an answer to a question that is not exactly the one he was addressing.  Materialist or naturalist accounts of thought and its content typically suppose that they can be explained in terms of causal relationsof some kind.  The idea is that a thought will have the content that (say) the cat is on the mat if it bears the right sort of causal relation to the state of affairs of the cat’s being on the mat.  Spelling out what the “right” sort of causal relation would be is where things get very complicated.  And the main issue is that indeterminacy problems afflict every attempt to spell out the analysis.  For the state of affairs we call the cat’s being on the matcan also be described as a state of affairs involving a domesticated mammal’s being on the mat.  So why does the fact that this state of affairs causes the thought entail that the thought has the content the cat is on the mat as opposed to the content a domesticated mammal is on the mat?  You can add details to the description of the causal relation to get around this problem, but the revised account of the causal relation will in turn face indeterminacy problems of its own.  (An example would be Fred Dretske’s account of semantic content, which I discussed in a post a few years ago.)
At the end of the day, the indeterminacy can only be eliminated by simply conceptualizing the relevant causal relata in this specific way rather than that way.  That is to say, it can be eliminated only when there is an intellect present which can do the needed conceptualizing.  Yet the whole point of the causal theory of content was to explain where thoughts having a certain conceptual content come from.  So any such theory must fail.  It inevitably must presuppose the very thing it was supposed to be explaining.  (This is a point which has been made in different ways by Karl Popper and Hilary Putnam, and which I develop in “Hayek, Popper, and the Causal Theory of the Mind,” also reprinted in Neo-Scholastic Essays.)
The deep point implicit in what Augustine says, then -- though again, this isn’t really the set of issues he was addressing -- is that the intellect’s grasp of meanings is more fundamental than any behavior, gestures, utterances, aspects of the communicative context, etc. that might be used to teach or express meanings.  Hence you are not going to be able explain the former in terms of the latter.  You are not going to be able to reduce intelligence to patterns of behavior or dispositions to behavior (as the behaviorist holds), or explain it in terms of causal relations between the human organism and aspects of its environment (as causal theories of content hold), etc., because the behavior, causal relations, etc. have whatever semantic associations they have only by reference to an intellect which grasps those associations.  The intellect is itself the central and irreducible element of the semantic situation.  (It is irreducible to inner “utterances” and other mental imagery too.  When I entertain the thought that the cat is on the mat, I might “hear” in my mind the English sentence “The cat is on the mat,” but that auditory image is not itselfthe thought.  See “Kripke, Ross, and the Immaterial Aspects of Thought” for more on this subject.)
In this vein, Augustine also notes (at p. 29) that it is a mistake to think that gestures like pointing are the key to understanding meaning.  Pointing one’s finger is, after all, itself just another piece of behavior susceptible of alternative interpretations, and is not in the first place fundamentally about the thing pointed to at all:
Augustine: … I don’t much care about aiming with the finger, because it seems to me to be a sign of the pointing-out itself rather than of any things that are pointed out.  It's like the exclamation ‘look!’ -- we typically also aim the finger along with this exclamation, in case one sign of the pointing-out isn’t enough.
In other words, what pointing primarily does is to call attention to the fact that the one pointing is trying to call our attention to something, and only secondarilydoes it indicate the thing that is being pointed to.  This reflects the fact that the presence of an intellect is fundamental to the semantic situation, and the significance of gestures, utterances, actions, etc. is only derivative.  Imagine a garden hose lying on the ground in such a way that it seems to “point” to a certain tree.  We don’t regard this as genuine “pointing” -- in the sense that deliberately aiming your finger at someone is genuine pointing -- because we know that the hose does not have an intellect and thus cannot be trying to call our attention to something.  We would regard it as genuine pointing only if we supposed some person had come along and arranged the hose that way in order to get us to notice the tree.
It would be absurd, then, to try to explain how intellect gets into the picture by starting with meaningless physical elements and their behaviors, then supposing that some kind of “pointing” arises in sufficiently complex systems -- say, by means of causal relations of some sort -- and then in turn supposing that intellects arise in some subset of these systems which cross some yet higher threshold of complexity.  All of this would get things precisely backwards.  For “pointing” of the relevant sort could arise only where there is already an intellect present, which intends by the “pointing” to call attention to something.
Related posts:
Augustine on the immateriality of the mind
Augustine and Heraclitus on the present moment
Kripke contra computationalism
Oerter and the indeterminacy of the physical
Oerter on indeterminacy and the unknown
Do machines compute functions?
Can machines beg the question?
Da Ya Think I’m Sphexy?

Long list o’ links

You’ve long longed for a list of links.  And it’s been a long time since I listed any links.  So here’s a long list of long longed-for links. 
Chris Kaczor is interviewed at National Review and America magazine about his new book The Gospel of Happiness .
At Nautilus, philosopher Roger Trigg explains why science needs metaphysics.
Sexual ethics and the modern academy: a Princeton Anscombe Society panel discussion with John Haldane, Candace Vogler, Roger Scruton, and Robert P. George.
The Wall Street Journal on how Steely Dan created “Deacon Blues.”At The University Bookman, Robert Koons reviews R. J. Snell’s Acedia and its Discontents .

Mike Flynn on sentimentality and civilization.
Thinking of getting a Ph.D.?  Maybe you should first read Charlotte Allen’s piece in The Weekly Standard.  And Gabrielle Girgis’s in Public Discourse.  (However: If you can overcome both of the obstacles described in these articles, we desperately need you in academia.)
We Catholics are living in interesting times.  Commentary from R.R. Reno, Ross Douthat, and Damian Thompson. And there's a theme song.
Philosopher Paul Symington on Aquinas on prime matter.
Also at The University Bookman: David Seed’s new book on Ray Bradbury is reviewed.
Leslie Marsh has the coolest looking blog I’ve ever seen.
At New Yorkmagazine, Jonathan Chait explains why it’s time to take political correctness seriously.
And as if to illustrate the problem, Germaine Greer is under fire for stating the bleeding obvious.
The second volume of Peter Adamson’s “history of philosophy without any gaps” has just come out.  So has his book on Islamic philosophy.  Adamson’s blog and his history of philosophy homepage will keep you up to date on the project and on his podcasts.
For what it’s worth: Richard Dawkins’ interview with the late Christopher Hitchens, in New Statesman.
New in Thomism: Fred Freddoso on Thomism and the philosophy of mind in Acta Philosophica; David Oderberg on divine premotion in International Journal for Philosophy of Religion.
Vanity Fair on the secret origin of Tom Wolfe.
At The American Conservative, Don Devine mourns the army he knew.
Conservative philosopher Roger Scruton on Catholicism and Anglicanism, at the Catholic Herald. 
St. Peter Damian’s The Book of Gomorrah is now available in a new translation.
Swastikas!  Pornography!  And… the Latin Mass?  The absolutely bizarre story of the “Latin Mass Society.”  More details from Fr. Z.
Can materialism account for truth?  Philosopher Douglas Groothuis says No.
A 24-volume Neo-Scholastic theology and philosophy collection is available.  Register and make a bid at Logos.com.

Dumsday and Vallicella on Neo-Scholastic Essays

At Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, philosopher Travis Dumsday kindly reviews my book Neo-Scholastic Essays .  From the review:
Edward Feser writes as an historically informed Thomist who is also thoroughly conversant with the analytic tradition…
[T]his volume nicely exhibits Feser's clear writing style and uncommonly strong facility with both the Scholastic and analytic traditions. Those of us attempting to integrate these traditions can profit from his example.Summarizing and commenting on the contents of the book, Dumsday focuses on those essays concerned with topics in metaphysics, philosophy of nature, and natural theology.  When discussing my essay on Aristotelian and Newtonian accounts of motion, he summarizes one of the points I make as follows:

Aristotelian natural philosophy and Newtonian science are addressing different domains: the former seeks underlying causes and natures, while the latter seeks merely the accurate mathematical description of observed regularities. As such they cannot conflict.
Dumsday then goes on to comment:                                                
I would dispute that fifth point, at least when taken as a characterization of the aims of contemporary physicists. It smacks of the anti-realist perspective that remains far too prevalent in analytic philosophy of science; in fact physicists are typically after underlying causes and real natures, not merely mathematical description and accurate prediction. For better or worse, Scholastic philosophy of nature and the natural sciences constitute partially overlapping magisteria. (Elsewhere in this volume Feser seems to turn away from scientific anti-realism; see especially his approving comments concerning the work of Nancy Cartwright on 82, 191, and 328. There is a tension here. However, in Feser's most in-depth discussion of the disciplinary boundaries of physics (Scholastic Metaphysics 2014, 12-18) the tendency is again toward anti-realism, or at best a version of structural realism.)
A couple of remarks in response to this: First, where philosophy of physics is concerned, I wouldn’t call myself an anti-realist, certainly not as a way of characterizing my general position.  If one insists on a label, “a version of structural realism” (as Dumsday suggests in passing) would be a better one, though here too qualifications would be in order.  Anyway, I agree that “Scholastic philosophy of nature and the natural sciences constitute partially overlapping magisteria.” 
But second, I’m reluctant to endorse any single, across-the-board label, because the different areas of modern physics (not to mention modern science more generally) each raise difficult metaphysical issues of their own and to some extent need to be treated in a case-by-case way.  (The difficult issues arise, by the way, whether or not one is an Aristotelian.  Needless to say, modern science is, empirically, a great success story.  But metaphysically it is something of a mess.)  Anyway, this is a set of topics I will be saying much more about in the book on the philosophy of nature on which I am working.
Commenting on my essay “Natural Theology Must be Grounded in the Philosophy of Nature, Not in Natural Science,” which calls for a return to Aristotelian-Scholastic foundations in natural theology, Dumsday writes:
While I agree with Feser on the distinctive strengths of a natural theology rooted in Scholastic philosophy of nature, he is too hard on early modern mechanistic thought and its contemporary analogues. As Robert Boyle and others pointed out at the time, certain cosmological arguments can actually be run more simply on an ontology of corpuscularianism + extrinsic governing laws than on hylomorphism. (And contra Feser, these needn't be seen as leading no further than a desiccated deism -- there are potential routes to classical theism here.) Further, the early modern switch from an Aristotelian conception of time as merely the measure of motion to time as a real background condition provided fuel for new cosmological arguments unavailable to Scholastics (e.g., the argument that the persistence of the temporal stream itself requires an extrinsic sustaining cause). And the core Thomistic argument from the real distinction between essence and existence in finite substances can be run on any philosophy of nature. (Admittedly that last claim would require considerable elaboration, including development of the arguably un-Thomistic idea that the essence vs. existence distinction needn't be formulated in terms of potency vs. act.)
Dumsday makes three points here: first, the one about Boyle and cosmological arguments; second, the one about the persistence of the temporal stream as in need of a sustaining cause; and third, the one about the status of the real distinction between essence and existence on non-Aristotelian philosophies of nature.
I am dubious about the first and third points.  I’d need to see the specifics of a cosmological argument run on an ontology of “corpuscularianism + extrinsic governing laws,” and of an appeal to essence and existence which is not “formulated in terms of potency vs. act,” and Dumsday doesn’t offer examples (which is fair enough given that it’s a book review rather than a full-length treatment of the issue).  The essay of mine Dumsday is commenting on purports to show that the theory of act and potency is needed in any successful cosmological argument, so that without offering specifics, Dumsday’s remarks by themselves don’t really give a reason to think that I’m mistaken but only express the opinion that I am mistaken. 
The second point, about time, does offer a specific example, and a very interesting one.  However, I would say that an “argument that the persistence of the temporal stream itself requires an extrinsic sustaining cause” would, when fully spelled out, still require an appeal to the theory of act and potency, so that the example doesn’t really affect the main point of my essay.  Anyway, time is another subject which will be dealt with at length in the forthcoming philosophy of nature book.
Bill Vallicella also kindly calls attention to my book.  Commenting on my workload, Bill writes: “The phenomenal Edward Feser.  How does he do it?”  But Bill should know that the phenomenal Edward Feser is a mere appearance rather than a ding an sich, and that he “does” things only insofar as we bring to bear on our experience of him the category of causality.  What Bill should be asking is how the noumenal Edward Feser does it.  Unfortunately, as Kant showed, that question is unanswerable.
But seriously, ladies and germs, if you’re interested in further information about Neo-Scholastic Essays, the cover copy and table of contents can be found here.

Red herrings don’t go to heaven either

They say that pride goeth before a fall.  And if you’re Jerry Coyne, every fall goeth before an even bigger fall.  The poor guy just never learns.  Show him that he’s shot himself in one foot, and in response he’ll shout “Lock and load!” and commence blasting away at the other one.  It seems the author of Why Evolution is True has got it into his head that a Darwin Award is something it would be goodto win.  And this week he’s made another try for the prize.But first some background.  Recently we witnessed Coyne badly embarrass himself when attempting to defend Lawrence Krauss against some criticisms I had leveled against him.  As I demonstrated in the post linked to, Coyne commits a battery of logical fallacies -- poisoning the well, red herring, non sequitur, special pleading, and straw man -- makes category mistakes, uses language sloppily where precision is called for, badly misrepresents the views of his opponents, and is breathtakingly ignorant of what the writers he confidently dismisses actually say.  He even confuses me with William Lane Craig.  In a follow-up post I demonstrated that Coyne has been peddling the same shameless misrepresentations of his opponents for four years now -- despite multiple corrections of the record, and despite the fact that some of his own atheist readers have begged him to cut it out.  (As we saw, one of those readers got banned from Coyne’s blog.) 

You don’t have to sympathize with my views to see the awfulness of Coyne’s performance.  Commenting on Coyne’s “diatribe” and my response to it, Coyne’s fellow atheist Jeff Lowder concluded, at the Secular Outpost:
If I were to sum up Feser’s reply in one word, it would be, “Ouch!” I think Feser’s reply is simply devastating to Coyne and I found myself in agreement with most of his points.
My onetime sparring partner Eric MacDonald -- who was once an ally of Coyne’s and whose advice Coyne acknowledges in his recent book Faith vs. Fact, but who has now distanced himself from the New Atheism --  wrote in response to Lowder:
I have said very much the same kinds of things about Coyne, and was asked to go elsewhere if I had any criticisms to make (which is not a sign of intellectual honesty in itself), though he did not outright "ban" me…
I must say that, having left the narrow confines of Coyne's outlook, I have been greatly helped by Professor Feser's careful reading and argument, something that Coyne could not be accused of.
And now, it seems, even Coyne himself has realized the magnitude of his humiliation.  Not that he has responded to, or even commented on, the criticisms I raised in those two recent posts. On the contrary, he has for more than a couple of weeks now been strangely silent about that.  Instead, this week he has, out of the blue, posted a weird rant about a six month old article of mine criticizing David Bentley Hart’s view that dogs and other fauna go to heaven.  Apparently the biologist, materialist, and staunch atheist Coyne thinks I’m a complete idiot for taking the view that there is no afterlife for animals.  Wrap your head around that one.
But actually, it’s not so hard to understand Coyne’s sudden interest.  The guy is as transparent as an air guitar, and only ever manages to make himself look as silly as someone playing one.  Here’s my hypothesis: Coyne is irked that I made him look like a fool.  (Or rather, that I pointed out how he’d make himself look like a fool.)  Payback is called for.  But Coyne can’t actually answer the criticisms I raised in my posts, because they’re unanswerable, and because drawing his readers’ attention to them will only exacerbate his embarrassment rather than remedy it.  So, Coyne decided to try something else.  Trawling the web for something he might use as a diversion, he came upon my exchange with Hart.  Bingo!  Tossing this red meat into the monkey cage that is Coyne’s combox would be the perfect way to distract attention from the fiasco of several weeks ago:
Nothing to see over there, folks.  Really, I mean it, nothing.  C’mon, stop looking already.   Oh, but hey, look over here!  Check out these two guys arguing about animals in heaven!  Can you believe it?!  I said animals in heaven!  No really, look over here!  Isn’t this just hilarious?!  Really just fall-on-the-floor funny, right?  Right?!
Am I warm, Jer?
Per the Iron Law of New Atheist literature, it only gets worse.  Coyne complains that I do not establish in my article about Hart that there is any such thing as an afterlife in the first place, whether for animals or for anyone else.  Of course, that was not the point of the article; it would require separate argumentation, which I have provided elsewhere.  Yet when I do direct readers to other places where I have developed such arguments, Coyne accuses me of engaging in self-promotion. 
This is all very childish, of course, but it is standard New Atheist shtick: If an opponent doesn’t answer absolutely every possible objection in one short article, accuse him of not having established anything.  If he does respond to many objections or addresses any one of them at length, accuse him of being long-winded.  If instead he refers to other writings where the issues are treated in greater depth, accuse him of evading the issue, or of trying to sell books.  If he complains about this farcical “heads I win tails you lose” procedure, accuse him of being thin-skinned and unwilling to take criticism.  A pretty crude rhetorical trick, but an effective one with the dumber sort of secularists who form Coyne’s base, who are only interested in the latest Two Minutes Hate anyway, rather than in having a serious discussion. 
Naturally, Coyne also repeatedly accuses me -- as he ritualistically does absolutely every theist, no matter how many and detailed his arguments are -- of having “no evidence” and of “just making stuff up.”  Then absurdly -- and, in good Jerry Coyne fashion, without seeing that he has just contradicted himself -- he admits that in fact I do give arguments for my views, but that they are in an article of mine that he says he will not bother actually to read.  (The article is “Kripke, Ross, and the Immaterial Aspects of Thought,” which appeared in American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly a few years ago and is reprinted in my anthology Neo-Scholastic Essays .) 
As goes without saying for Coyne readers, this doesn’t stop Coyne from leveling various objections to the arguments he says he won’t bother reading -- objections I’ve answered many times in various places, including the very article Coyne refuses to read.  But then, this is (as longtime readers will recall) a man who once wrote over 5000 words attacking a book (by Hart) which he admitted he had not actually read -- and in the course of doing so, and with no trace of irony, accused the book’s authorof having had his “intelligence… blatantly coopted and corrupted to prove what [he] has decided is true beforehand”!
Yes, dear reader, behold the mind of Jerry Coyne -- of a man who explicitly refuses to read what his opponents have actually said, but will nevertheless attack at length the arguments he guesses they must be giving, and who in the same breath will insist that it is those opponents who refuse to look at actual “evidence” and who “make things up.” 
Well, that is itself evidence for you, though only further evidence of what has already been massively confirmed, viz. that Coyne is a Walter Mitty atheist if ever there was one!

Repressed knowledge of God? Part II

We’ve been discussing the thesis that human beings have a natural inclination toward theism, and that atheism, accordingly, involves a suppression of this inclination.  Greg Koukl takes the inclination to be so powerful that resisting it is like “trying to hold a beach ball underwater,” and appears to think that every single atheist is engaged in an intellectually dishonest exercise in “denying the obvious, aggressively pushing down the evidence, to turn his head the other way.”  (Randal Rauser, who has also been critical of Koukl, calls this the “Rebellion Thesis.”)  In response to Koukl, I argued that the inclination is weaker than that, that the natural knowledge of God of which most people are capable is only “general and confused” (as Aquinas put it), and that not all atheism stems from intellectual dishonesty.  Koukl has now replied, defending his position as more “faithful to Paul’s words” in Romans 1:18-20 than mine is.  However, I don’t think this claim can survive a careful reading of that passage.St. Paul’s intent in chapters 1 and 2 of Romans is, in part, to argue that Gentiles are just as much in need of salvation as Jews are.  It might seem otherwise because the Gentiles did not have the Mosaic Law or, more generally, any special divine revelation like the one embodied in the Old Testament.  Hence one might suppose that their moral failures and theological errors can be excused on grounds of ignorance.  But Paul argues that the Gentiles do have available to them knowledge of God’s existence and nature of the sort enshrined in natural theology (1: 19-20), and the moral knowledge embodied in the natural law (2:14-15).  Hence, though they lacked the Old Testament, they nevertheless had at least some significant knowledge of moral and theological truth, and are therefore culpable for failing to conform themselves to it. 

The example St. Paul gives of the sort of theological error the Gentiles were guilty of is idolatry.  He criticizes them for conceiving of God on the model of “mortal man or birds or animals or reptiles” (1:23), even though they should have known that in fact the creator must have attributes of “eternal power” (1:20) and immortality (1:23) and thus cannot properly be compared to such creatures.  St. Paul’s chief example of the immorality the Gentiles fell into is homosexual behavior (1:26-27), and he also says that they are guilty of envy, murder, treachery, gossip, disobedience to parents, and many other sins (1:29-31). 
Now, there are several things about these chapters that should give pause to anyone hoping to read off the “Rebellion Thesis” from them.  The first is that the “Rebellion Thesis” is not even what is in view in the passage.  For one thing, St. Paul is not talking about atheism here in the first place, but rather idolatry.  For another, his emphasis is not on psychological repression per se but rather on what can be known via natural theology.  That is not to deny that what he says is relevantto the issues of whether atheism can be known to be false apart from special divine revelation, and of whether some kind of repression plays a role in atheism.  Of course it is relevant.  The point is that the psychology of atheism is simply not the topic he is addressing.  Again, his topic was rather whether the Gentiles had sufficient moral and theological knowledge available to them to be culpable for their sins, and thus to be as in need of salvation as were those who had the Mosaic Law.  To treat Romans 1 as a straightforward statement of the Rebellion Thesis is therefore anachronistic.  You might try to argue for the Rebellion Thesis on the basis of the principles St. Paul sets out there, but he is not himself addressing that particular topic.
A second problem is that even where his criticism of idolatry is concerned, what St. Paul gives us is very far from a comprehensive list of which lines of argument demonstrate the existence of God and exactly which of the divine attributes can be known by way of such arguments.  He tells us that from “the things that are made” by God, we can know of his power, eternity, and immortality, and therefore can know that he isn’t comparable to a mere man or an animal.  And that’s pretty much it.  Does God have all power or only a high degree of power?  Is he omniscient?  Is he perfectly good?  Is he timeless, or merely everlasting?  Is he simple or composite?  Is he immutable?  Is he best known by way of an Aristotelian argument from motion?  A Neo-Platonic argument from composite things to a non-composite cause?  A Leibnizian argument for a Necessary Being?  A moral argument?  A Fifth Way style teleological argument?  A Paley style design argument? 
Paul doesn’t address these issues in the passage and, more to the point, he doesn’t say that the Gentiles in general should be expected to know the answers.  Indeed, his emphasis isn’t on how much we can know about God by natural means, but rather merely on how we can know at least enough to be able to see how stupid it is to think of God on the model of a man or an animal. 
To be sure, we Thomists certainly think that all of these particular questions, and many others, can be answered via purely philosophical arguments.  Our claims about natural theology are if anything much more bold than those of most Christian apologists. But the issue here is not what fancy-pants philosophers and theologians can know about God apart from special divine revelation.  The issue is what the average person can be expected to know apart from special divine revelation.  And contrary to what Koukl implies, what St. Paul actually says in Romans 1 is perfectly compatible with Aquinas’s position that most people are capable of only a “general and confused” knowledge of God apart from special divine revelation.
Then there’s a third problem.  Proponents of the “Rebellion Thesis” maintain that each and every single atheist is engaged in an intellectually dishonest, culpable suppression of what he knows deep down to be true.  I have argued that that isn’t the case, and that what is true of atheism as a mass phenomenon isn’t true of each and every atheist in particular.  Koukl claims that it is the Rebellion Thesis rather than my position that is actually supported by Romans 1:
[T]hough many atheists are not consciously aware of their rebellion (some are, of course) and may feel they have intellectual integrity in their atheism (some demonstrate a measure of integrity in their reasoned rejection of God), still, when all the cards are on the table in the final judgment, when men’s deepest and truest motives are fully revealed (Lk. 12:2), rebellion will be at the core.  This rebellion-at-the-core, I think, is what Paul had in mind in Rom. 1—a fairly ordinary, run of the mill biblical point, it seems.
End quote.  Leave aside the point that St. Paul isn’t even addressing atheism, specifically, in the first place.  The problem for Koukl is what St. Paul doessay.  Again, speaking of the Gentiles in general, Romans says that “they… changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man -- and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things” (1:22-23), that “their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature” and that their men did likewise (1:26-27), and that they are also guilty of sins such as murder and inventing evil things (1:29-30). 
Now, if the defender of the Rebellion Thesis is going to appeal to Romans 1 in support of the claim that each and every single atheist is guilty of an intellectual dishonest, culpable suppression of what he knows to be true, then to be consistent, he will also have to regard Romans 1 as establishing the claim that each and every Gentile, or at least those who had lived up to St. Paul’s time, was guilty of thinking of God on the model of “birds and four-footed animals and creeping things,” of homosexual behavior, and of murder and of inventing evil things.  And there are two problems with such a claim.
First, we know that it is false.  We know that not every single Gentile conceived of God in this crude and idolatrous way.  (For example, Xenophanes and Aristotle did not.)  We know that not every single Gentile engaged in or even approved of homosexual behavior.  And obviously, not every Gentile committed murder or invented some evil thing. 
Second, the claim would simply not be a plausible reading of Romans 1 in any case, even apart from this empirical point.  For to infer from what St. Paul says about Gentiles in general to the conclusion that each and every single Gentile was guilty of all of the sins he describes is to commit a fallacy of division(as some of my readers have pointed out in the combox). 
But it is no less fallacious to infer from what he says about “suppressing the truth in unrighteousness” to the conclusion that each and every singleatheist is engaged in a culpable act of intellectual dishonesty.  Nor, I would say, is this much less empirically dubious than the claim that each and every Gentile is guilty of murder.  Even Koukl implicitly admits this when he tells us that the rebellious suppression he attributes to atheists is often “sub-conscious” -- thus making his position immune to empirical testing.  And some of Koukl’s defenders appear to think that if it seems empirically false to say that every single atheist is being intellectually dishonest, then this empirical evidence is trumped by (their interpretation of) Romans 1.  But that is like saying: “Each and every one of the Gentiles must have been guilty of murder, because the Bible says so!”  If the text can naturally be read in a way that comports with the actual empirical evidence, then that is a good reason to read it that way -- in the case of atheists who are to all appearances intellectually honest no less than in the case of Gentiles who are to all appearances innocent of murder. 
Here is another consideration.  When someone calls himself an “atheist,” we need to get clear about exactly what he means by that, exactly what he is denying, before we conclude that he is engaged in some sort of intellectually dishonest suppression.  Many religious people themselves have a very crude understanding of God’s nature, and of other theological matters as well.  When an atheist who is simply unfamiliar with more sophisticated accounts rightly rejects these vulgar accounts, he may well believe -- mistakenly but sincerely -- that this entails rejecting theism as such.  And if so, it doesn’t follow from the fact that he calls himself an “atheist” that he is engaged in any sort of intellectual dishonesty or suppression of the truth.  Rather, he may be simply following the limited evidence he has to where he honestly thinks it leads, and rejecting what is in fact false.  If presented with a better understanding of theism, be might change his mind.   Of course, he might not change his mind even then, and it might turn out that intellectual dishonesty is what prevents him from doing so.  But the point is that the fact that someone at some stage of his life calls himself an “atheist” simply doesn’t entail by itself that he is engaged in intellectual dishonesty.
Thus does the Catechism of the Catholic Church, while affirming that “atheism is a sin against the virtue of religion,” also go on to say:
The imputability of this offense can be significantly diminished in virtue of the intentions and the circumstances. "Believers can have more than a little to do with the rise of atheism. To the extent that they are careless about their instruction in the faith, or present its teaching falsely, or even fail in their religious, moral, or social life, they must be said to conceal rather than to reveal the true nature of God and of religion.”(2125)