Say WHAT?
Maybe reading Cardinal Newman allows converts some measure of intellectual peace when comparing the first three centuries of the early church’s views on, say, ecumenicism and what is taught by the modern Magisterium. Development is a powerful notion that can erase apparent or actual contradictions. But as a Protestant, I see no reason to appeal to something like Newman’s sense of doctrinal development, and so what is claimed as development really looks, from the outside, like a set of socially and politically conditioned deviations and contradictions from the earlier deposit of faith.
Yup.
In the time I spent considering conversion to Catholicism, every single apologetics book, essay or article recommended to me was written by a lay Catholic. Why aren’t the bishops engaged in apologetics? Aren’t they the authoritative teachers within Catholicism? If so, why would I trust the exegetical, theological, and philosophical arguments put forth by lay Catholics who have no direct oversight or approval of bishops? To trust these arguments would be to trade one set of private interpretations for another.
A fish always rots from the head down, doesn't it?
This is downstream of another problem. As a Protestant, I have two basic options when informing my study of the Bible. The first is consulting scholars who think the text is inspired and more or less inerrant. This comes with arguments or assumptions about the nature and quality of the Bible’s authorship: Matthew really did write Matthew, the disciples’s memory of Jesus’s teachings is entirely or almost entirely accurate, Jesus really did make accurate prophecies, he really did miracles as described, and so forth.
The other option is consulting scholars who doubt or actively disbelieve all of the above propositions. They approach the text with a hermeneutic of suspicion. They doubt Matthew wrote Matthew. They doubt Jesus said and taught everything ascribed to him. Many claim that Jesus’s teachings were issued as a fallible man: given perhaps as a (mostly) good man, but certainly not as a divinely inspired God-man.
When it comes to Catholicism, most or all of the NT Catholic scholars I’m aware of fall somewhere in the second camp. Why would I follow a denomination that approves of or passes over scholars within its own ranks that seem to deny or doubt the reliability and authority of the Bible on such a regular basis? Consider, for example, how the NAB and the USCCB hedge on Pauline authorship. If Paul didn’t author some of the letters purported to be his, that raises questions about their inspiration and, therefore, divine authority.
If the intellectual leaders of Catholicism have a fairly low view of Scripture,
And they do.
that directly undermines the lay Catholic apologists who appeal to the Bible as if it actually teaches what Jesus and Paul really said. Who am I to believe? The Catholic scholar who questions whether half the Pauline corpus was really written by Paul or the lay Catholic apologist who argues assuming traditional authorship? If I take Catholicism at face value, then I would have to believe the intellectual over the lay apologist. And that would mean there’s no reason to take the lay apologists seriously if their arguments appeal to suspect passages written by someone pretending to be Jesus or Paul.
Furthermore, in the American context, any form of Protestantism that takes the Bible “literally,” is basically despised. In all the important circles, there is enormous social pressure to hide one’s identity as a bigoted, backwards, intellectually inferior, uneducated, and politically conservative Evangelical Protestant.
EXACTLY. Catholicism (and Orthodoxy, and Black Fundamentalism, and islam, and "indigenous" shamanisms) are all perfectly respectable. Only Clem and Buford are despised. It is this social prejudice against rural American "white trash" that is responsible for this absolute 180 degree turn in what was once chrstian belief. So why should "conservative" Catholicism be seen as any less of an enemy as the rest of the redneck-hating cultural elite? What makes its elitism somehow "different?" Most converts are probably self-hating WASPs anyway.
The only way this article could possibly be improved would be to dismiss the "new testament" and call for universal acceptance of the Noahide Laws. But for what is written here, it's about the best I've ever read.
I can't wait to read all the responses from FR Catholics about how their Church has always believed in evolution/higher criticism/etc. and these beliefs are identical to those of Jerome.
Say WHAT?