Positively Apostate

Bill Cork, who lately reverted to Seventh-Day Adventism from Catholicism, writes:

This focus on authority results in what I’ve called “magisterial positivism,” in which truth is what the Church teaches. If it appears it taught something else, such an apparent contradiction lies only in your perception.

I agree with him about this intellectual tendency in how modern Catholics view the Magisterium, though I called it something else when I posted on the tendency some time ago. Many modern Catholics do seem to engage in ultramontane moral relativism, and they probably even do so, without Magisterial warrant, out of positivist tendencies.

But the reason Cork sees it as a form of positivism is, it seems to me, because he has himself confused authority with truth. He has failed to see that the relationship of the faithful to the Church is not one of readers to encyclopedia. In other words, he has failed to step outside of the very intellectual error he is criticizing.

Cork goes on:

In fact, what this means is that Church teaching can flip-flop from age to age and lay people are yanked back and forth and always expected to respond with “docility.”

What is expressed here is also a very common mistake these days, it seems to me, resting on the false idea that the law of non-contradiction holds some quiddity when applied, not to truth, but to authority. The truth, it is true, doesn't change its mind without becoming untrue. But authority is perfectly capable of changing its mind without becoming not-authority.

One of the (perhaps counterintuitive) implications of the doctrine of infallibility - which relates truth to ecclesial authority - is that the law of non-contradiction only falsifies the claims of Catholicism when it is applied to infallibly defined doctrine. The Church, like any spouse, is perfectly capable of changing her mind in a way which contradicts prior authoritative - but not infallible - doctrine. This is a mundane truth about the nature of things which does not excuse you from obedience. It may irritate you, but it doesn't justify a divorce; and you probably (I hope) weren't stupid enough to demand as a condition of marriage that your spouse never change her mind.

And in the end obedience to authority is what this is really about, not some sham falsification of the Catholic Faith constructed by making a mundane truth about authority exercised over time and within history into some faux profound Platonic gotcha with respect to the truth. What it really comes down to is this:

Thus the church could tell the state in one era, “You must execute,” and in another era, “You must not execute.” It commands kneeling to one generation and forbids it for another. It rejects religious liberty and proclaims religious liberty. It excommunicates people of one era for wanting mass in the vernacular and in another era excommunicates them for wanting it in Latin. It claims the ability to create laws binding in conscience and to remit even divine laws, and to do so without providing explanation or justification.

Or, paraphrasing William Luse of Apologia, what this comes down to is unwillingess to recognize any authority greater than ones own imperial self.

A Catholic submits to Peter knowing full well - or at least responsible for knowing full well - that Peter hasn't promised, when it comes to a great many things, not to change his mind. A Catholic submits to Peter because Peter is the Vicar of Christ, given the keys by Christ.