The argument that wasn't

Shane Wilkins at Scholasticus answered a comment I had made at Michael Liccione's blog. "Answered" might be a bit strong a term, as he has (at least to my way of thinking) been talking past Catholic views from the beginning, including my own.

I'll start with the beginning and the end, where Shane says:

In response, let me just note two things: first, I've never made the argument that catholicism as such implies a vice (although clearly I think one is capable of submitting to papal authority in a vicious way). What I'm trying to do is to show that protestantism does not imply a vice, contrary to some catholic detractors. It would also be a secondary goal of mine to show that protestantism and catholicism are on the same plane, epistemologically speaking.
...
I don't think I've ever claimed that all submission to authority ex officio is naive.

This is connected to the foregoing point. I did not try to prove that submission to authority ex officio is inherently naive just because that isn't what I believe. (My object is not to prove catholicism false.) Rather, I took it as sufficient to note that submission to authority ex officio is not always virtuous. (Which I take to be an utterly non-controversial point.) If this is the case, then once again, the onus lies on the catholics to show why submission to the Pope's authority (which is ex officio) is always virtuous. If I were trying to prove catholicism false, then yes I would have to prove that in all cases submission to the Pope's authority is vicious. As it turns out, that isn't the conclusion for which I'm arguing, and therefore I don't have to make that claim.

I would settle for ANY case in which submission to the Pope's authority is vicious, because you haven't done that either. Rather, what you described yourself as doing was showing the non-controversial point that submission to authority ex officio is not always virtuous, which does not prove that submission to any particular human authority is not always virtuous and far less that submission to the Pope ex officio in the relevant manner required by Catholic dogma is not always virtuous. Since the disputed claim is precisely whether submission to the papacy is always virtuous, it begs the question to say that it isn't. To date, you haven't even given us an argument to think that it isn't, nor have you made any effort to answer the Catholic reasons for thinking that it is.


I'm not sure why the onus is on me to prove the church isn't divine. One would think that a casual glance over the history of the church would make it seem extraordinarily difficult for you to prove that it is. In fact, there is no way in which you could prove it to a neutral third party. Belief in the divinity of the church comes by faith not by intellectual demonstration.

I didn't say that the onus was on you to do that, unless you are actually attempting to answer the Catholic view (I admit to being unclear as to what a "neutral third party" has to do with it). But if you are attempting to answer the Catholic view, then it would appear fairly clear that your argument that submission to the Pope in particular can be vicious turns on a disputed premise. As to what that disputed premise is, I can move to the middle of Shane's reply.

But if you have to take the authority of the church on faith, then in what sense is catholicism superior to protestantism, or for that matter the JWs or Mormons? In fact it isn't. We're all in the same fix--we have insufficient evidence to establish the conclusion which we accept on faith.

If we were all in the same fix, then none of us should believe any of them. That's a bit brutal, but so is the natural prohibition on idolatry: you can't worship what you do not know for certain is God. The entire point of Catholic faith is that the divine action of the Church is the cause of all our knowledge of divine things. And the rejoinder to everyone else is "what divine action is the cause of your certain knowledge of divine things?" If the chain terminates on someone's subjectivity, I don't buy it. The JWs and the Mormons didn't receive their apostolate from someone laying hands on them who received it from someone laying hands on them, etc.; they claim to have been inspired directly by the Holy Spirit. You appear to have the same notion of faith as some sort of internal disposition that you think the Holy Spirit gave you. Not good, particularly if you admit that the little bug in your ear is talking you into believing things that you know you don't have sufficient evidence to believe.

Your comment makes it seem that you agree with me 'epistemologically' but disagree 'ontologically'. However, the distinction is incoherent. What access do you have to ontological realities apart from through your knowledge of them? If you say, 'by faith' then you are right back on the same plane as the JW's and everybody else.

One could summarize the Catholic view relatively easily: the Church is the cause of my knowledge of revealed things as revealed. And this notion that we're all in a epistemological crisis because a bunch of people are making claims is, at least as far as I can tell, complete nonsense. The answer is obvious: you believe none of them, until you have actual knowledge that one of them is true. That's not an epistemological crisis, because from the practical sstandpoint, you have no need to make a decision. Sure, we believe all sorts of things on insufficient evidence, because we have to do it. But no one forces you to be religious. There's no practical reason compelling a judgment on insufficient evidence about knowledge of God, because practically speaking, knowledge of God isn't necessary. Consequently, it's imprudent (and dare I say vicious?) to render judgment on a claim prematurely. The Catholic Church caused me to know, so I judged. What caused you to know certainly, so that you were compelled to judge?