{"id":3042,"date":"2007-02-07T09:09:11","date_gmt":"2007-02-07T09:09:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/02\/a-final-word-on-heresy.html"},"modified":"2007-02-07T09:09:11","modified_gmt":"2007-02-07T09:09:11","slug":"a-final-word-on-heresy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/02\/a-final-word-on-heresy.html","title":{"rendered":"A final word on heresy?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I trust that those of you who have been following the conversation in First Things have been, well..following it. But just in case, here’s the latest from Fr. Oakes on heresy:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

What I\u2019m searching for is a term for two different kinds of heresies: one in which no agreement is possible between the orthodox position and a heretical position (docetism, for example), and one in which agreement can, at least in principle, be reached (like justification by faith). Again, extreme cases are best for illuminating what I mean, which I hope will explain to Dr. Pitstick and others what I mean by Catholic theologians who are \u201cselling the company store.\u201d The following sentences represent a catena of quotations from the chapter on the Resurrection from Roger Haight\u2019s Jesus, Symbol of God<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\n

My understanding of the resurrection does not support the necessity of an empty tomb in principle<\/em>. Resurrection faith today is not belief in an external miracle, an empirical historical event testified to by disciples, which we take as a fact on the basis of their word. Although that may describe in fact the belief of many Christians, it is no ideal. A reflective faith-hope today will affirm Jesus risen on the basis of a conviction that Jesus\u2019 message<\/em> is true; because God is the way Jesus revealed God to be, Jesus is alive. . . . Because it was Jesus whom people experienced as risen, and not someone else<\/em>, one must assume that Jesus had a forceful religious impact on people<\/em>. . . . In the view proposed here, the external event that helped mediate a consciousness of Jesus risen was Jesus himself during his ministry<\/em>. Or, to be more exact, after his death, the disciples\u2019 memory<\/em> of Jesus filled this role. (All emphases added.<\/em>)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I certainly hope I don\u2019t have to argue the point here that an orthodox understanding of Christology and the Resurrection can reach no common understanding whatever<\/em> with these sentences, either now or at any time in the future. Here surely Fr. Richard John Neuhaus\u2019 famous law can be invoked: \u201cWhen orthodoxy becomes optional, it will sooner or later be proscribed.\u201d Tragically, Haight\u2019s views are part of a long trend in Catholic theology that began right after the Second Vatican Council, a point that Joseph Ratzinger was one of the first to notice. In his epochal Introduction to Christianity<\/a><\/u> (1968), he describes the Neuhaus law\u2013with remarkable prescience, I might add\u2013using one of the fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm:<\/p>\n

\n

Anyone who has watched the theological movement of the last decade and who is not one of those thoughtless people who always uncritically accept what is new as necessarily better might well feel [feel!<\/em>] reminded of the old story of \u201cClever Hans.\u201d The lump of gold that was too heavy and troublesome for him he exchanged successively, so as to be more comfortable, for a horse, a cow, a pig, a goose, and a whetstone, which he finally threw in the water, still without losing much; on the contrary, what he now gained in exchange, so he thought was the precious gift of complete freedom. . . .<\/p>\n

The worried Christian of today is often bothered by questions like these: Has our theology in the last few years not taken in many ways a similar path? Has it not gradually watered down the demands of faith, which had been found all too demanding, always only so little that nothing important seemed to be lost, yet always so much that it was soon possible to venture on to the next step? And will poor Hans, the Christian who trustingly let himself be led from exchange and exchange, from interpretation to interpretation, not really soon hold in his hand, instead of the gold with which he began, only a whetstone that he can safely be advised to throw away? <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Note that Haight is shilling his views as a Catholic<\/em> theologian (indeed, he was once elected president of the Catholic Theological Society of America, which just goes to show how pervasive his views are, at least among the professor-set). It is precisely against trends represented here so garishly by Haight that Cardinal Ratzinger struggled during his tenure as Prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), which explains the relevance of Ad Tuendam Fidem<\/u><\/a>, Ex Corde Ecclesiae<\/u><\/a>, and (above all) Dominus Iesus<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n

In fact, the controversy aroused by that last document highlights my point. Because they lacked a proper terminology for different modes of heresy, the bien-pensants<\/em> of the world press largely took Dominus Jesus<\/em> to be an unwarranted insult to Protestant churches and to other religions. In point of fact, however, it was a warning against pluralistic trends in Catholic theology<\/em>. But because it was promulgated in a pluralistic world, it was taken as a declaration abjuring all dialogue of whatever stripe. That this was far from Cardinal Ratzinger\u2019s mind can be seen in his book Truth and Tolerance<\/a><\/u>, a painstakingly worked-out set of reflections on how the intentional community of the Catholic Church can authentically dialogue with positions so different from her own.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I trust that those of you who have been following the conversation in First Things have been, well..following it. But just in case, here’s the latest from Fr. Oakes on heresy: What I\u2019m searching for is a term for two different kinds of heresies: one in which no agreement is possible between the orthodox position…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nA final word on heresy? - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/02\/a-final-word-on-heresy.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A final word on heresy? - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I trust that those of you who have been following the conversation in First Things have been, well..following it. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3042\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}