Ecumenism’s Venn Diagram
N M C P
the magisterium, "Show me." And show you it can. The dogmas of Holy Mother Church are anything but random. They are systematic, coherent, and justifiable. We have the truth on our side, and we aren’t afraid to get our hands dirty in the realm of philosophical and empirical investigation. Bring it on.
Indeed, one of the main reasons that Catholicism has appealed to intellectuals since its inception, is that it offers a view of existence that is philosophical, systematic, and all-encompassing. The Church abhors the esoteric and capricious. The Catholic is never required to believe anything 'just because', and at no time is an arbitrary appeal to authority made, neither in the realm of dogma nor in morals. We might say that the Catholic Church never just answers the question: it always shows its work.
So it is terribly ironic that the neo-Catholics would accuse the traditionalist of 'Protestantism', given that it is precisely a contingent of Protestants who divorce themselves from needed theological and philosophical premises in the forging of their own (false) Christian dogma, content as they are to simply appeal to the bible alone. The neo-Catholics, that is, have made of the extraordinary magisterium what the Baptist has made of his good book: an arbitrary, exclusive, autocratic authority, answerable to nothing.
If we were only concerned with these inter-varsity battles, the traditionalists could simply note the irony of their struggle with neo-Catholics and trudge on. Unfortunately, the larger world has come to think of the neo-Catholic position, one which eschews reasons for mere arbitrary and therefore tyrannical decrees, as the conservative Catholic position. For the protestant nature of neo-Catholic 'religious thinking' is seen by secularists all of the time; after all, secularists don't notice when neo-Catholics call traditionalists ‘protestants’. But they do notice when many of the same neo-Catholics join up with actual Protestants in the ‘ecumenical trenches’, to fight larger social evils in tandem. But this 'ecumenical' move, unfortunately, makes perfect sense: for the same reason that their charges against the traditionalist are unfounded, their alliance with the Protestants is completely logical.
And it is here, in the ‘ecumenical trenches’, that the most pernicious effects of the neo-Catholic appeal to authority is seen. That is, wherever there are ecumenical appeals, Catholics are simply prevented from playing their game. And it is the Catholic game that is the only one that is any good. For as soon as the Catholic joins up with evangelicals and other 'conservative' protestants in order to fight social ills, he must appeal to common conclusions, and eschew premises. He must, that is, present positions that are as arbitrary as his complaints against the traditionalist regarding the new prayers. Ecumenical alliances effectively render the 'religious conservative' position as generic, blank, and barren as any Novus Ordo prayer. But if the 'religious conservative' position is void of premises-if, more specifically, it is divorced from a philosophy of nature that renders the Catholic position not just systematic but coherent—the resulting 'religious conservative' position is mere irrational nonsense at best, and capricious bigotry at worst.
This last point is important to repeat. Sadly, accusations of the irrational and 'close-minded' nature of the 'religious conservative position' is, tragically enough, entirely warranted. For any appeals to a moral code that is couched in the language of a religion now entirely divorced from philosophical justification is bigoted! It is an appeal that no secularist should take seriously. After all, the now suitably generic and premisefree 'religious conservative position', the very one that emerges through the unholy alliance of supposedly like-minded religious individuals, is a position that has been sanitized of anything but a ‘common’ conclusion, a conclusion that is now completely and totally arbitrary. In a word, the ecumenical position is voluntarist.
The Catholic is wary of nominalism, but more importantly, he abhors voluntarism. The voluntarist holds that we must obey God, and that’s fair enough. But he also holds that God is such that He could command whatever He damn well pleases. As creatures created by and beholden to God, we must obey whatever God commands. The voluntarist argues that even if we can appeal to an intelligible creation (and let’s remember that many protestants, in their rejection of scholasticism, are quite happy to say that we can’t), it simply doesn’t matter, since God might will something that completely bypasses whatever natural law might be there. The voluntarist says that we must be content to listen to the will of God. Why should we follow moral position x? Just because. We should notice that this position is actually a form of theological
nihilism, and it is assuming a God that is nothing more than an irrational and volatile tyrant.
Surely, one might protest, no one in the ecumenical trenches believes such a thing about God. They are anything but nihilists, one might argue. I can’t speak for the Baptist or the sundry varieties of evangelical, but I know that the Catholic isn't a nihilist, even the neo-Catholic. But it simply doesn’t matter at this point. What emerges from the ecumenical trench is a de facto voluntarism, since appeals to respective premises are prohibited, and therefore appeals to Catholic premises, the only ones that are any good, are prohibited. After all, such an appeal would hardly be ecumenical. No, the generic and empty ‘religious conservative' position that arises from the ecumenical trench is nothing more than an arbitrary appeal to a capricious authority.
Why should anyone listen to such an appeal? Not because it is a coherent position, since it obviously isn't. Neo-Catholics in the ecumenical trenches ironically seem aware of this. This is why they appeal not to the position’s coherency (which it has none of), but to the positive law of the secular state. So: why should someone listen to this appeal? Because the Constitution apparently safeguards such irrational appeals. It’s called ‘religious freedom’.
These conclusions might sound overly harsh. But I think they are true to life. For this is precisely what we see. We see Evangelicals and Catholics together, making appeals to a ‘Christian mission’ which is curiously bereft of philosophical content. We see ‘Manhattan’ declarations entirely void of appeals to natural law, and therefore conveniently missing any mention of vices that protestants, who eschew natural law, simply don’t see as vices.
Lastly, we find the bishops appeal not to natural law and the Kingship of Christ the Logos, but to the confused and problematic nature of ‘religious freedom.’ That is, we don't have fortnights for natural law, human flourishing, and right reason, but fortnights for 'freedom' meaning, well, apparently just the right to abide by our incoherent and arbitrary set of beliefs.
How odd that a Church that thrives on the disputatio and relishes philosophical debate, a Church that is not afraid of any opposing theory, a Church that has reasoned truth on its side, a Church quite happy to get its hands dirty in its investigation of reality has been so sanitized of its own rasion d’etre by ecumenical projects, that it must now be forced to say, "Look, we should have the right to abide by our quirky beliefs! It’s right there in the Constitution!"
This last example is especially ironic, since it is over an issue that is, as the Manhattan declaration’s curious absences attest, exclusive to Catholics. But since neo-Catholics have been running the show for so long, the current struggle over what insurance should fund or not fund, is ironically couched in talking points that are thoroughly in line with the empty, arbitrary, and therefore ultimately bigoted ecumenical project.
Ecumenical goals have ruined the prayers of the Novus Ordo Mass, but that's not the half of it. Ecumenism reduces the mighty scholastic to the bigoted, fundamentalist bible-thumper, for it reduces the greatest to the weakest links in the chain. It is a true-to-life tale reminiscent of Vonnegut’s Harrison Bergeron. Ultimately, ecumenism, in its 'conservative' guise, has rendered the Church an irrational, narrow-minded, and backwards institution in the public eye. It has transformed a truly rational and systematic enterprise, and one committed not just to the goal of saving souls from hell but one interested in the perfection of our natural telos and the common good, into a reactionary and petty religious sect that secularists should rightly treat with derision.
Traditionalists need to remind their fellow Catholics that ecumenism is a dangerous enterprise, for more reasons than one.
How odd that a Church that thrives on the
disputatio
has been so sanitized of its own
raison d’etre
by ecumenical projects, that it must now be forced to say, "Look, we should have the right to abide by our quirky beliefs! It’s right there in the Constitution!"