The Sebelius and Dowd Heresy

Last week, two prominent Catholic women -- Kathleen Sebelius in an address to the graduates of Georgetown University's public policy school, and Maureen Dowd in a column published in the New York Times -- delivered strong statements about the Church's role in civil society. Dowd's column was more or less a screed, while Sebelius's address was relatively measured in tone.

Yet both were marked by some pretty fundamental misunderstandings, which have, sadly, become widespread.

Echoing an army of commentators from the last fifty years, Dowd exults in James Joyce's characterization of the Catholic Church (drawn, it appears, from the pages of Finnegans Wake) as "here comes everybody." The word "catholic" itself, she explains, means "all-embracing" and "inclusive;" hence it is desperately sad that the Church, which is meant to be broad-minded and welcoming, has become so constricting. Whether it is disciplining liberal nuns or harassing pro-choice Catholic commencement speakers, the Church has abandoned the better angels of its nature and become intolerant.

She concludes, "Absolute intolerance is always a sign of uncertainty and panic. Why do you have to hunt down everyone unless you're weak? But what is the quality of a belief that exists simply because it's enforced?" Not only is this narrow-minded aggression un-Catholic; it's downright un-patriotic; "This is America. We don't hunt heresies here. We welcome them,"she writes.

The problem here is a fundamental confusion between inclusiveness in regard to people and inclusiveness in regard to ideas. The church is indeed all-embracing in the measure that it wants to gather all people to itself. The Bernini colonnade that reaches out like welcoming arms in front of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome is meant to carry precisely this symbolic valence. But the Church has never had such an attitude toward all ideologies and points of view. It has recognized, from the beginning, that certain doctrines are repugnant to its own essential nature, or contradictory to the revelation upon which the Church is constructed. This is precisely why, for the past two millennia, theologians, bishops, Popes, and councils have consistently and strenuously battled heresies concerning central Catholic dogmas. They have understood that the adoption of these errors would fatally compromise the integrity of the Church.

Truth be told, any community must, if it is to survive, have a similar "intolerance." The Abraham Lincoln Society would legitimately oppose the proposal that its members ignore Lincoln and concentrate on the study of Winston Churchill; the USGA would find repugnant the suggestion that Pebble Beach be turned into a collection of baseball diamonds; and the United States of America indeed aggressively excludes those committed to the eradication of fundamental American principles.

The Catholic Church is not a Voltairean debating society; it is a community that stands for some very definite things, which implies, necessarily, that it sets its back against very definite things. A church that simply "welcomed" heresies would, overnight, cease to be itself.

We find another very common error in Secretary Sebelius's address to Georgetown. Deftly side-stepping the issue that has generated such controversy, the HHS demand that Catholic institutions provide insurance for procedures that Catholic morality finds objectionable. Sebelius cited John F. Kennedy's memorable 1960 address to Protestant ministers in Houston. Kennedy dreamed of an American "in which no religious body seeks to impose its will, either directly or indirectly, on the general populace." Over and again, from every quarter, one hears this call echoed today. But when you really think about it, you realize that it is so much nonsense.

What is so easily forgotten is that any law, any political movement, indeed any persuasive speech involves, in one way or another, the imposition of someone's will. In the mid-nineteenth century, William Lloyd Garrison and John Brown were certainly endeavoring to impose their wills regarding the abolition of slavery on the rest of the country. In 1862, with the publication of the Emancipation Proclamation, President Lincoln was most assuredly attempting to impose his will on many of his recalcitrant countrymen.

Publicly protesting Jim Crow laws, marching through the streets of Selma and Montgomery, speaking in the cadences of Isaiah and Amos on the steps of Lincoln's Memorial in Washington, Dr. Martin Luther King was certainly trying to impose his vision on an America that was by no means entirely ready for it. Indeed, just a year after the "I Have a Dream Speech," King was delighted with the passage of strict civil rights legislation, which gave teeth to the proposals that he had long been making.

Now in all the examples that I've given, explicit legal moves were motivated by solidly religious conviction. If you doubt me in regard to Lincoln, I would recommend a careful re-reading of his Second Inaugural Address.

The point is this: none of it would have legitimately taken place in the America imagined by John F. Kennedy, an America in which no religious individual or institution tried to impose its will either directly or indirectly.

What many have sensed in the recent moves of the Obama administration is precisely an attempt to push religion, qua religion, out of the public conversation. Individuals, groups; and institutions are continually trying, for various reasons and to varying degrees of success, to impose their wills on people.

Fine. That's how it works. What isn't fair is to claim, arbitrarily, that religious individuals and institutions can't join in the process.

Father Robert Barron is the founder of the global ministry, Word on Fire, and the Rector/President of Mundelein Seminary.

She concludes, "Absolute intolerance is always a sign of uncertainty and panic.

Why do you have to hunt down everyone unless you're weak?

But what is the quality of a belief that exists simply because it's enforced?"

Not only is this narrow-minded aggression un-Catholic; it's downright un-patriotic; "This is America.

We don't hunt heresies here. We welcome them,"she writes.

"She" is a blithering idiot!

Romans 15:4
For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.

Romans 16:17
I urge you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and put obstacles in your way that are contrary to the teaching you have learned. Keep away from them.

1 Corinthians 4:17
For this reason I am sending to you Timothy, my son whom I love, who is faithful in the Lord. He will remind you of my way of life in Christ Jesus, which agrees with what I teach everywhere in every church.

1 Corinthians 11:2
2. I praise you for remembering me in everything and for holding to the teachings, just as I passed them on to you.

Ephesians 4:14-15
14. Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming.
15. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ.

2 Thessalonians 2:15
So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the teachings we passed on to you, whether by word of mouth or by letter.

2 Thessalonians 3:6
In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we command you, brothers, to keep away from every brother who is idle and does not live according to the teaching you received from us.

1 Timothy 1:3-4
3. As I urged you when I went into Macedonia, stay there in Ephesus so that you may command certain men not to teach false doctrines any longer
4. nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies. These promote controversies rather than God's work--which is by faith.

1 Timothy 1:7
They want to be teachers of the law, but they do not know what they are talking about or what they so confidently affirm.

1 Timothy 2:7
And for this purpose I was appointed a herald and an apostle--I am telling the truth, I am not lying--and a teacher of the true faith to the Gentiles.

1 Timothy 4:1-2
1. The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons.
2. Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron.

1 Timothy 4:6
If you point these things out to the brothers, you will be a good minister of Christ Jesus, brought up in the truths of the faith and of the good teaching that you have followed.

1 Timothy 4:11
Command and teach these things.

1 Timothy 6:3-5
3. If anyone teaches false doctrines and does not agree to the sound instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ and to godly teaching,
4. he is conceited and understands nothing. He has an unhealthy interest in controversies and quarrels about words that result in envy, strife, malicious talk, evil suspicions
5. and constant friction between men of corrupt mind, who have been robbed of the truth and who think that godliness is a means to financial gain.

2 Timothy 1:13
What you heard from me, keep as the pattern of sound teaching, with faith and love in Christ Jesus.

2 Timothy 2:15-17
15. Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth.
16. Avoid godless chatter, because those who indulge in it will become more and more ungodly.
17. Their teaching will spread like gangrene.

2 Timothy 3:16-17
16. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,
17. so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

2 Timothy 4:3-4
3. For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.
4. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.

Titus 1:11
They must be silenced, because they are ruining whole households by teaching things they ought not to teach--and that for the sake of dishonest gain.

Titus 2:1
You must teach what is in accord with sound doctrine.

Titus 2:15
These, then, are the things you should teach. Encourage and rebuke with all authority. Do not let anyone despise you.

Hebrews 13:9
Do not be carried away by all kinds of strange teachings.

2 Peter 2:1-3
1. But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them--bringing swift destruction on themselves.
2. Many will follow their shameful ways and will bring the way of truth into disrepute.
3. In their greed these teachers will exploit you with stories they have made up. Their condemnation has long been hanging over them, and their destruction has not been sleeping.

2 John 1:10
If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not take him into your house or welcome him.

...intolerance is always a sign of uncertainty and panic. Why do you have to hunt down everyone unless you're weak?

Questions put to Joseph Smith: "'Do you believe the Bible?' [Smith:]'If we do, we are the only people under heaven that does, for there are none of the religious sects of the day that do'. When asked 'Will everybody be damned, but Mormons'? [Smith replied] 'Yes, and a great portion of them, unless they repent, and work righteousness." (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 119).

Joseph Smith: "for the teachers of religion of the different sects understood the same passages of scripture so differently as to destroy all confidence in settling the question by an appeal to the Bible" (from Pearl of Great Price 1:12). "What is it that inspires professors of Christianity generally with a hope of salvation? It is that smooth, sophisticated influence of the devil, by which he deceives the whole world" (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p.270).

Brigham Young stated this repeatedly: "When the light came to me I saw that all the so-called Christian world was grovelling in darkness" (Journal of Discourses 5:73); "The Christian world, so-called, are heathens as to the knowledge of the salvation of God" (Journal of Discourses 8:171); "With a regard to true theology, a more ignorant people never lived than the present so-called Christian world" (Journal of Discourses 8:199); "And who is there that acknowledges [God's] hand? ...You may wander east, west, north, and south, and you cannot find it in any church or government on the earth, except the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints" (Journal of Discourses , vol. 6, p.24); "Should you ask why we differ from other Christians, as they are called, it is simply because they are not Christians as the New Testament defines Christianity" (Journal of Discourses 10:230).

Orson Pratt proclaimed: "Both Catholics and Protestants are nothing less than the 'whore of Babylon' whom the Lord denounces by the mouth of John the Revelator as having corrupted all the earth by their fornications and wickedness. Any person who shall be so corrupt as to receive a holy ordinance of the Gospel from the ministers of any of these apostate churches will be sent down to hell with them, unless they repent" (The Seer, p. 255).

Orson Pratt also said: "This great apostasy commenced about the close of the first century of the Christian era, and it has been waxing worse and worse from then until now" (Journal of Discourses

, vol.18, p.44) and: "But as there has been no Christian Church on the earth for a great many centuries past, until the present century, the people have lost sight of the pattern that God has given according to which the Christian Church should be established, and they have denominated a great variety of people Christian Churches, because they profess to be ...But there has been a long apostasy, during which the nations have been cursed with apostate churches in great abundance" (Journal of Discourses , 18:172).

President John Taylor stated: "Christianity...is a perfect pack of nonsense...the devil could not invent a better engine to spread his work than the Christianity of the nineteenth century." (Journal of Discourses , vol. 6, p.167); "Where shall we look for the true order or authority of God? It cannot be found in any nation of Christendom." (Journal of Discourses , 10:127).

James Talmage said: "A self-suggesting interpretation of history indicates that there has been a great departure from the way of salvation as laid down by the Savior, a universal apostasy from the Church of Christ". (A Study of the Articles of Faith, p.182).

President Joseph Fielding Smith said: "Doctrines were corrupted, authority lost, and a false order of religion took the place of the gospel of Jesus Christ, just as it had been the case in former dispensations, and the people were left in spiritual darkness." (Doctrines of Salvation, p.266). "For hundreds of years the world was wrapped in a veil of spiritual darkness, until there was not one fundamental truth belonging to the place of salvation ...Joseph Smith declared that in the year 1820 the Lord revealed to him that all the 'Christian' churches were in error, teaching for commandments the doctrines of men" (Doctrines of Salvation, vol. 3, p.282).

More recent statements by apostle Bruce McConkie are also very clear: "Apostasy was universal...And this darkness still prevails except among those who have come to a knowledge of the restored gospel" (Doctrines of Salvation, vol 3, p.265); "Thus the signs of the times include the prevailing apostate darkness in the sects of Christendom and in the religious world in general" (The Millennial Messiah, p.403); "a perverted Christianity holds sway among the so-called Christians of apostate Christendom" (Mormon Doctrine, p.132); "virtually all the millions of apostate Christendom have abased themselves before the mythical throne of a mythical Christ whom they vainly suppose to be a spirit essence who is incorporeal uncreated, immaterial and three-in-one with the Father and Holy Spirit" (Mormon Doctrine, p.269); "Gnosticism is one of the great pagan philosophies which antedated Christ and the Christian Era and which was later commingled with pure Christianity to form the apostate religion that has prevailed in the world since the early days of that era." (Mormon Doctrine, p.316).

President George Q. Cannon said: "After the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was organized, there were only two churches upon the earth. They were known respectively as the Church of the Lamb of God and Babylon. The various organizations which are called churches throughout Christendom, though differing in their creeds and organizations, have one common origin. They all belong to Babylon" (Gospel Truth, p.324).

President Wilford Woodruff stated: "the Gospel of modern Christendom shuts up the Lord, and stops all communication with Him. I want nothing to do with such a Gospel, I would rather prefer the Gospel of the dark ages, so called" (Journal of Discourses , vol. 2, p.196).

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