Trust This Church? | Fr. Walter Brandmuller | From the Introduction to "Light and Shadows" | Ignatius Insight
Trust This Church? | Fr. Walter Brandmuller | From the Introduction to Light and Shadows: Church History amid
Faith, Fact and Legend
http://ignatiusinsight.com/features2009/brandmuller_lasintro_may09.asp
Occasionally the Church is compared with Noah's ark: only his sons and
daughters, only those animals that Noah took with him into the ark were saved
from the great flood. In a similar way, the Church is supposed to be man's only
rescue from the final catastrophe.
When discussion turns to the Last Things, to man's eternal fate, then the
question assumes the utmost urgency: To whom can he entrust his eternal fate
and himself? What can he rely on in life and death? Now, since the Church makes
the exclusive claim to be the saving ark, this claim must be so solidly
established that it does not mean a leap into uncertainty when man puts his
trust in this ark.
Questions About Questions
To many of our contemporaries, such trust in the Church appears to be nothing
less than an unreasonable demand upon sound common sense. Aren't there
countless facts (the objection goes) that demolish the credibility of the
Church?
Many people have read the numerous books or seen the
television programs that deal with the subject of the Qumran community and seem
to offer proof that the beginnings of Jesus of Nazareth and of Christianity
ought to be portrayed in a completely different way from what is recorded in
the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament. Many have also seen the
earthenware receptacle containing human remains that was found in Jerusalem, on
which the names Joseph, Mary and Jesus were inscribed. Isn't this compelling
evidence that Jesus did not rise bodily from the dead and that Mary was not
taken body and soul into heaven? With that, however, the foundations of the
Christian faith crumble into dust and ashes! Many people today suspect that
this is so.
Furthermore, the Church—as they say—through clumsy errors made by
her official teaching authority on numerous occasions, has repudiated her claim
to hold the truth infallibly. Let us listen to Hans Kung, who lists the
"classic errors of the Church's Magisterium, most of which have been
admitted". First he mentions the "excommunication of the Ecumenical
Patriarch of Constantinople, Photius, and of the Greek [Byzantine] Church,
which formalized the soon-to-be millennial schism with the Eastern
Church". Then Kung adduces "the prohibition against charging interest
[on loans] at the beginning of the modern era, whereby the Church's Magisterium
changed its opinion much too late, after various compromises". Then (what
else could you expect?) he also cites the trial of Galileo in 1616 or else in
1633 and other things of this sort. The most recent major error of the
Magisterium, in his view, is its rejection of artificial contraception.
Others before and after him have pilloried the Church on account of the
Crusades, the Inquisition and the witch trials, and anyone who is still not
satisfied is referred to the financial scandal of the Vatican Bank and the
murder conspiracy against Pope John Paul I, who was so likeable: Mafia in the
Vatican, at the heart of the Church. From another corner the cry is that a
power-hungry clique of Freemasons already replaced Paul VI with a double whom
they could control and that the Lodge in general seized power in the Vatican
long ago—and so on. Therefore, who can still trust such a Church?
If you are really going to ask the critical question about reliability,
however, then direct it not only at the Church but also at the objections that
are raised against her.
Justified Criticism?
The Qumran Theme
The most popular books about Qumran, The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception by Baigent and Leigh, and Jesus und die
Urchristen [Jesus and the Early Christians]
by Eisenmann, as well as other comparable publications on this topic, have been
exposed by serious researchers as clumsy concoctions. The books are partly the
result of scientific incompetence; to some extent they are based on deliberate,
malicious falsification of the facts. It is precisely the archaeological
findings at Qumran that, quite to the contrary. shed an extremely interesting
light on the New Testament and even clear up riddles. And as for the ossuary
with the names of Joseph, Mary and Jesus [Joshua], which actually comes from
Jerusalem and dates back to the time of Jesus, the names mean nothing at all,
when you consider that they were as common and therefore as insignificant as
the names Miller, Fields and Smith would be today.
Similarly, with regard to Hans Kung's "errors" of the Church's
Magisterium, we are dealing more with the errors of Hans Kung than with those
of the Church. First of all, in page after page, he confuses Patriarch Photius
with Patriarch Michael Cerullarius. Then Kung fails to mention that Photius was
excommunicated because he had become Patriarch in an unlawful manner and
furthermore had accused Rome of heresy and had tried to depose Pope Nicholas I
by means of a manipulated synod. Depending on how one views the particular
historical circumstances of this case, one could possibly speak about a wrong
decision in ecclesiastical politics or an unjust excommunication, but never
about an error of the Church's Magisterium.
The same is true for the prohibition against lending at interest and its
gradual abolition by the Church. This prohibition against charging interest was
based on the Old Testament and had been confirmed by popes and councils. Why
this was so becomes clear when you consider that in antiquity and in the
medieval world, charging interest was most often identical to usury. Lending at
interest lost this sinful character, however, with the transformation of
commercial structures in the late Middle Ages. Thus the reason for the
prohibition against charging interest became moot over the course of time, and
from then on the only concern was with the question of determining the just rate
of interest. The general prohibition had thereby become null and void. So where
in all this is there an error of the Church's Magisterium?
The condemnation of Galileo's teaching about the fixed position of the sun and
the movement of the earth, which is also so often described as an error of the
Church's Magisterium, proves upon closer inspection to have been justified at
the time. With the scientific methods at his disposal, Galileo could not offer
a proof that would convince the specialists either of his day or of ours that
that is really the case, nor could he explain, before the discovery of gravity
by Isaac Newton, how the earth could possibly revolve at breakneck speed around
the sun and around its own axis while at the same time nothing of the sort is
perceived by us, since everything on earth stands firm and secure instead of
being tossed about in a tumultuous whirl. Most importantly, though, the whole
legal proceeding against Copernicus and Galileo resulted in not one single
magisterial statement that could have been described as a dogma and on that
account would have been irrevocable. In this case, too, the critics fail to
take into consideration the many events and facts in intellectual, cultural and
scientific history that explain this decision. Furthermore, the most recent
scientific findings vindicate the Church of 1633.
A comparably nuanced, careful and comprehensive approach should be taken to the
problems connected with the touchy subjects of the Crusades, the Inquisition
and the witch trials. In light of recent findings and the latest research,
these subjects prove to be many-layered and much more complicated than the
superficial observations oft hose who look at them as a source of ammunition
against the Church. Moreover, anyone who has even the foggiest notion of the
complexity of Financial-political activities and their worldwide
interconnections and knows, furthermore, what sort of possibilities they offer
for manipulation, will assume that the aforementioned Vatican financial scandal
resulted from excessive gullibility or perhaps incompetence or even frivolity
in financial matters on the part of the ecclesiastical authorities rather than
from criminal intrigues.
As for an opinion of Yallop's book, In God's Name, which maintains that John Paul I was murdered, it
is enough to read the first thirty pages in order to pass judgment. On these
pages there is talk about the popes of the nineteenth century, and so much of
it is false that it is hard to imagine that the author used even an encyclopedia—for
that would have sufficed to prevent the numerous errors. If Yallop does not
report correctly what everyone can easily find out, how are we supposed to be
able to believe him when he cites conversations and events for which, by the
very nature of the matter, there can be no witnesses except those who were
supposedly involved? No doubt, nothing more should be said about the double of
Paul VI and other such luxuriant outgrowths of overheated imaginations.
All these things and many others besides are alleged in order to shake
confidence in the Church. As we have shown in these all-too-brief remarks,
however, in all these cases that supposedly vitiate the Church, historical and
theological knowledge about the subject is enough to prove that such accusations
are groundless.
But What About the Moral Failings?
One can with good reason retort that the most extensive knowledge about a
subject of this kind will not suffice to excuse the religious and moral
failings of important members of the Church throughout the centuries and in
every locality, down to the papal adulterer Alexander VI. But then the question
arises, on what do we actually base the trust that we place in the Church?
The real basis for our trust can never be a splendid spiritual, moral and religious
manifestation of the Church in this world. This has existed and indeed does
exist always and everywhere—but one likewise finds always and everywhere
the much more conspicuous opposite. Thus all romanticism about the early
Church, a romanticism that imagines it sees in the first generations of
Christians nothing but holiness and greatness, necessarily runs aground on the
hard facts: the Christian married couple Ananias and Sapphira tried to defraud
the Apostle Peter; in Paul's congregation at Corinth, there was a case of
incest and rebellion against the Apostle; in Philippi, Saint Paul's committed
female co-workers Euodia and Symyche quarreled with each other so much that
Paul had to give them a serious warning. Indeed, Paul himself parted with Mark and
Barnabas during one of his journeys due to differences of opinion that were
evidently insuperable. Finally, as early as the year 70, according to the
latest research, there was an uprising in Corinth against the priests, such
that the Bishop of Rome had to intervene forcefully.
Thus the Church has never had that spotlessly radiant appearance that she ought
to have. So it is no wonder, either, that those who believed that they were
especially devout were scandalized again and again by this and founded their
own "church of the blameless". In contrast, the Church has always
shown herself to be a great realist who has always and everywhere reckoned with
the failure of her members. Not for nothing did the Lord Jesus himself, who
searches and knows the depths of the human heart, institute the sacrament for
the forgiveness of sins.
It cannot be said, either, that the shepherds and members of the Church have
always and everywhere reacted correctly to the chal1enges of history. On the
contrary, many mistakes have been made that subsequently became notorious. For
example, was not it disastrous that Pope Clement V allowed himself to be
intimidated by the demands of the French king Philip and abandoned the order of
Knights Templar, who as a whole were certainly innocent, to a downfall that was
in large pare bloody? Entire episcopates—today we would say bishops'
conferences—fell into heresy during the Arian crisis of the fourth and
fifth centuries. In the sixteenth century the bishops of England, with the exception
of Saint John Fisher, followed King Henry Vlll into schism our of weakness and
cowardice, and similarly the French episcopate, during the conflict over the
freedom of the Church from the state, stood beside Louis XIV against the pope.
For almost two centuries the French bishops promoted the heresy of Jansenism.
There were not many exceptions, And how did the German bishops conduct
themselves during the eleventh- and twelfth-century Investiture Controversy? In
1080 a majority of the German bishops, under the influence of Emperor Henry IV,
made an attempt at a synod in Brixen to depose Pope Gregory VII and to elect an
antipope. Those German bishops who found themselves confronted with the
religious division of the sixteenth century no doubt failed in large measure,
too.
Truly, all of this does not make for glorious pages in the ecclesiastical
chronicles. In the end, therefore, we cannot place our trust in the wisdom and
power of the shepherds, either. No promise was ever made to the Church that her
shepherds and her faithful would be irreproachable or capable. What her
Founder, the God-man Jesus Christ, did guarantee, nevertheless , is that she
will continue unshakably and stand fast immovably in the truth until his return
at the end of time. This means that the Church can never proclaim an error in
matters of faith whenever she speaks in a form that is ultimately binding; that
her sacraments always produce their characteristic effects of grace, provided
that they are administered according to the Church's directions; and that her
hierarchical-sacramental structure comprising the ministries of primacy,
episcopacy and priesthood will always be maintain ed intact. Precisely thereby
it is guaranteed that the graces of redemption will continue to be available to
the people of all generations, until the Lord comes again.
Related IgnatiusInsight.com Articles and Excerpts:
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• The Spanish Inquisition: Fact Versus Fiction | Marvin R. O'Connell
• The Crusades 101 | Jimmy Akin
• Were the Crusades Anti-Semitic? | Vince Ryan
• Crusade Myths | Thomas F. Madden
• Urban II: The Pope of the First Crusade | Regine Pernoud
• The Truth About Joan of Arc | Regine Pernoud
• Mistakes, Yes. Conspiracies, No. | The Fourth Crusade | Vince Ryan
Father Walter Brandmuller is president of the Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences. From 1970 to 1997, he was a professor of Church history at the University of Augsburg, Germany.
He is the co-author of the German book The Fall of Galileo and Other Errors: Power, Faith and Science.
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