I have a question Professor Blosser. It is easy to point out how long the Catholic Church has been in existence, but as our Protestant brethren often point out, this long history is filled with many records of mortal sins committed by everyone from the Pope to the layman. The Church seems to suffer from this same vicious cycle of faithfulness/blessing-unfaithfulness/judgment (surely we are in the latter!), but nevertheless she stands still. My question, then, is: Are our Protestant brethren, the more historical ones, that is, right in having a forensic understanding of salvation? I know that this is usually discussed in terms of the individual's status before God, but I can't help but wonder about its validity concerning the Church since she has a history so marred by sin and yet still standing!
St Pio,
I'm not sure I quite understand the import of your question. Perhaps it's something like the following? Since the Church is sinful, justification must surely be a forensic matter since the empirical record doesn't suggest evidence of infused justice, rectitude, or sanctity? If so, I would still say, no, I don't think such empirical impressions are a sufficient basis on which to draw conclusions about justification. Justification is a detailed and tricky thicket to go into -- much too detailed to tackle in a comment box. Though we could do a post on it sometime if you thought it worthwhile. But maybe your question has more to do with Church history. I'm still not sure whether I've tracked your question adequately.
The notion that democracies have only a limited life seems to be based on the idea that most people do not and will not become direct owners of the means of production. Consequently, propertyless voters will vote themselves goodies, which, given the widespread acceptance of the ideas of Malthus, means taking the from the haves to give to the have-nots.
This is fully consistent with the observations by both Daniel Webster and Benjamin Watkins Leigh in the Constitutional Conventions of 1820 (Massachusetts and Virginia, respectively) during the debates on whether the franchise should be extended to adult white males who did not own a meaningful stake of income-generating assets. As Webster observed, "power naturally and necessarily follows property." This was reiterated by Leigh (which, my memory not being what it should, I paraphrase), "Power and property can be separated for a time, but divorced, never. For as soon as the pangs of separation are felt, power will take over property, or property will purchase power."
Nevertheless, instead of taking what seems to be the rational method of opening up the means to acquire and possess property democratically to all and thus secure the foundations of our democracy, the franchise was extended, but nothing done about the property issue, which George Mason in the Virginia Declaration of Rights had pinpointed as one of the most crucial. The error was repeated when the franchise was extended to freedmen and, later, to women.
Abraham Lincoln attempted to deal with this problem with the Homestead Act, but it only addressed one type of productive asset -- land. Land being limited in nature, it could only ultimately benefit a limited number of people, given the ownership structures of the time.
Nevertheless, the American Republic has lasted longer with genuine democratic features than most other "experiments" because direct ownership of the means of production -- even though it is concentrated to an unacceptable degree -- is more widespread in the U.S. than anywhere else. There are serious flaws in our ownership institutions (thanks in part to the highjacking of the Federal Reserve to serve the needs of government instead of business and commerce and to Henry Ford and the landmark case "Dodge v. Ford Motor Company, 1919), but it's still better than anything else around.
What we need is a "Second [Peaceful] American Revolution," which will open up democratic access to the means of acquiring and possessing private, directly-owned productive property on the part of all citizens, a "capital" or "industrial" homestead act.
Forget about home ownership for the purpose of this discussion. Houses, cars, etc., do not usually generate a stream of income for their owners. (Ignore, again for the sake of the argument, McKnight's concept of "imputed rent" -- we're talking cash money here.) They are consumer goods, and are what income is spent on, not generators of income.
One pro
Hmm. Got cut off there. And it was the last paragraph! Now I have to try and remember what I said ...
One proposal to open up democratic access to the means of acquiring and possessing directly owned private productive property is "capital homesteading," developed by the interfaith Center for Economic and Social Justice, "CESJ," www.cesj.org. The book "Capital Homesteading for Every Citizen" is available there as a free download.
Darn. I said it better before. Anyway, I also have to add that "ownership" in a qualified retirement plan is not "direct ownership"; it's "beneficial ownership." Similarly, although Michael Novak likes to claim all Americans are rich because the government has so much wealth, that's not direct ownership, either.
Democracies inevitably die. So do totalitarian regimes of every stripe. All contraptions of human government have to be considered mortal. What system, in the broadest sense of the word, doesn't "die", from the degeneration of its parts, from the degeneration of its powers of organization, or from the hostility of the environment in which it must "live"?
The civilization / organism analogy is probably fairly apt if not taken too far. If cancer can be fancifully described as a phenomenon in which cells actually "rebel" against their creator host, and proceed to create a doomed, malformed "world" of their own by devouring him, what can the present culture of this democracy be but an organism in the early to middle stages of malignancy?
This seems to be the way things go with cultures, governments and organisms alike, so I don't suppose one ought to be too surprised. If evil can be thought of as a "cancer" in which the part inexplicably turns against the whole, then the world is a fairly evil place, a by-product of Adam's turning against his Creator. We should expect these things -- even when they happen inside the Church.
Democracies must fall in this manner because they have no moral foundation. Monarchies, having a moral foundation, predictably fall when the moral order is successfully undermined. The Church, being divinely instituted, has suffered and will suffer persecutions, but will never die.
Oof, hit a typographical pet peeve there--Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Edinburgh. No borough on the end.
Anyway, I think there is danger in simplifying historical causation to such a degree, but I am sympathetic to the argument. Nonetheless, it is easy to find cycles and patterns where it serves us to find them. If history works in a cyclical manner, then such cycles are subjective. Is it possible to view the cycles, then, in an objective manner? It would seem that doing so requires a good faith attempt to realize the interplay of the theoretically infinite cycles. This has always seemed the weakness of much historical writing, and, perhaps, teaching. Concentrating on the ultimate precipitous event leads the student to view history, at least historical events, in a vacuum.
It is tempting to afford great significance to contemporary events, but I doubt the cited events are symptomatic of a sea change in political structures, at least in the way that the bombing of Japan or the fall of Rome was.
"The Church, being divinely instituted, has suffered and will suffer persecutions, but will never die."
Never meant to suggest otherwise.
I don't mean to draw conclusions about the Doctrine of Justification regarding individuals. I'm referring to the Church as a whole. St. Paul writes that Our Beloved Savior "gave himself up for her [the Church], that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish." (Eph 5:25-27) If we are not to understand this holiness of the Church in a purely eschatological sense (i.e., something that will be given to her) or a forensic sense (i.e., something covering her), then in what other way can we understand this reality of holiness of the Church in light of her not-so-holy history?
I know this is a bit wordy and the grammar is horrid, but please bear with me.
Perhaps this might help (or hinder). There are three human societies: 1) Domestic (the Family), 2) Civil (the State), and 3) Religious (the Church).
The "need" for Domestic and Civil society in some form is built in to human nature. That is, we are domestic and political by nature, but the form of a particular family or State is a human artifact, based on tradition, custom, and so on. The "fact" of family and State is a given within the constraints of natural law; the structuring is up to us.
Clearly we can make mistakes in the structuring of a State or the family within a particular cultural environment. We may deviate significantly from natural law in how we apply the basic principles that define a particular family or State. When that happens, it is our individual and personal responsibility to organize with others, carry out acts of social justice, and bring our domestic or civil order back into tolerable conformity with the natural law.
Relgious society in the particular form of the Catholic Church is different.
Clearly it is run by fallible human agents. It would be excessively tiresome to list all the crimes committed and stupid mistakes made for the past 2,000 years in the name of the Catholic Church. "Infallibility" when teaching does not extend to "impeccability" in human acts. "Do as I say, not as I do" may be hypocritical on an individual human level and even on an administrative organizational level, but with regard to the substance as well as the form of the Catholic Church, it is valid.
This is because the Catholic Church is the only one (if you are Christian) that can trace not only its substance (part of human nature -- a misunderstanding of which results in the ridiculous statement that man made God in his own image, the basic doctrine of the Modernists), but its basic form to God. God not only implanted in human nature the need to worship Him, the Second Person of the Trinity established a visible organization with a mandate to carry out a specific mission.
How men understand that mission and carry it out is subject to human failings. Even maintenance of the institution can run into difficulties caused by imprudent administrative or political decisions. When teaching on matters of faith or morals, with all the usual qualifications, however, the Church is infallible.
The difficulty in reforming the Church when it appears to be making bad prudential decisions nearly always runs up against the human tendency to believe that only the reformer knows what's best. Especially today, what is targeted for "reform" may not need reform at all -- the real concern should be resistance to the attempt to force a worldly viewpoint on to the Church. The alleged abuse may not even be an abuse, but the antidote to some worldly stupidity.
That, in my opinion, is how we can have a Church that is infallible in matters of faith and morals, but sometimes does bad things.
St. Pio,
I think the short answer is that salvation is through incorporation into Christ (which also means, not so incidentally, incorporation into His Body understood as the Church). While there is a forensic declaratory dimension to justification, I don't think justification (and certainly not the whole of salvation) can be properly reduced to a forensic declaration that we are covered with the imported extrinsic righteousness of Christ (so we are, as Luther declared, "snow-covered dung hills"). To be incorporated into Christ, eschatologically understood, is to be not merely declared righteous, but to be made righteous -- the significant proviso being that of St. Augustine, that the God who create us without our help will surely not save us without our help (that is to say, the cooperation of our free will). There can be no metaphorical dung (sin) in heaven, covered or otherwise, or in Christ, ultimately.
Beckwith,
Oops. Sorry about the typo. Thanks for catching it. I should know better.
Ralph R-D,
A hearty welcome back from your Lenten fast! I missed you! What a welcome sight to see you again.
Is the infallibility of the Church and the holiness of the Church the samething?
St. Pio:
Your posts make me think of Caiaphas stating that it is fitting for one man to die for a whole country. He was speaking under the prophetic inspiration of the Holy Spirit--a function of his office--but his motivation and his act were not holy.
The Church has the charisms or gifts of the Holy Spirit. She can be a steweard of them, like St. Padre Pio, and be justified--the holiness of God works through the creature to accomplish God's will in a spirt and dynamic of co-operation. She can alternatively be stewarded by that charism, as was Caiaphas, in which case God's will is accomplished but hte individual soul does not benefit.
One gets into tricky ground, though, because Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin lost those charisms for the political nation of Israel, even though those charisms and the call that mothered them are irrevocable for the people of Israel. The prophetic office trnasitioned over to Peter, the apostle Kephas, together with the apostles.
It should be remembered that the political covenant with the nation of Israel came through Moses, a covenant that Moses himself said was temporary and provisional until the Prophet came. The covenant that Prophet, Jesus Christ, established is sempiternal and will funciton on earth until his Second Coming. The successor of Peter together with the Apostles then, will either be the stweard of, or stewarded by, God's grace until history's final fulfillment. The justification of each individual depends on their being a steward of that grace.
Your ultimate question about the Church's justification, as Pertinacious said, cannot be answered here. You can find the answer penned out at great lenght, thoguh, in Saint Augustine's City of God. A kind of pithy precis of Augustine's thesis occurs in Jesus Christ's Parable of the Wheat and the Tares (Matthew 13: 24-30, 34-40).
Hope this is useful. Thanks for reading.
BTW, the text quoted couldn't have the origin ascribed to it. The word complacency in late eighteenth-century Scottish intellectual circles had positive rather than negative connotations, something like tranquility. The principles in the text may be sound, but the facts they're tied to are out-and-out fabrications.
The text quoted in the original blog post that is...
Thanks, PP, it's great to be wanted back! I did visit from time to time. I was saddened by your report of your brother's death. All stories end sadly on this side of the grave. God's mercy to us all on the other. ..
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