I posted the following as a comment on a thread of Kelly Wilson’s at Vox Nova, here:

“I agree with Sam. I also suspect that with titles like “Gay Rights Are Human Rights“ (with banners flying), and “A Hero Dead” in referring to a famous atheist (that is, famous for being an atheist), it just might be the case that Kelly is deliberately trying to press people’s buttons. : )”

Kelly deleted the comment. He was kind enough to email me to inform me of the reason. I do appreciate that courtesy. I won’t say what his reason was, since it was set forth in a private email. He is welcome to comment here if he chooses to make his reason public.

I’m posting this because I am opposed to blog censorship for reasons other than incivility (and of course spamming). I think it was a civil comment and didn’t deserve to be trashed.

Are doubt and faith compatible?

I have encountered people who say that faith and doubt not only can, but should co-exist, in the same person at the same time, and as to the same object.  An acquaintance has gone so far as to assert that faith without doubt is inhuman, immature, and cowardly.

I reply that faith and doubt are incompatible.

To my mind, “doubt” is basically indecision: We have not yet determined whether to believe or assent to something. We don’t believe it’s true, and we don’t believe it’s false. If we believed it were true, we would no longer be doubting; and if we believed it were false, we would no longer be doubting; for in either case our mind would be made up.

To have faith is to decide to believe that something is true. Once we have so decided, we are no longer in a state of doubt. If doubt re-enters the picture, then we are no longer in a state of faith. It’s certainly possible to waver between belief and unbelief, but it’s not possible to do both at once.

Cardinal Newman writes that there are three types of propositions:  Interrogative, conditional, and categorical.  You may ask a question (interrogative); you may draw a conclusion (conditional, since it depends on premisses); or you may make an assertion (categorical).  He writes further that these types of propositions correspond to three modes of holding propositions in the mind:  Doubt (interrogative), inference (conditional), and assent (categorical).

Applying these three modes to revealed religion, Newman writes that a man is either a skeptic towards religion; a philosopher, having arrived at the conclusion that it is more or less probable based on logical inferences; or a believer, having an unhesitating faith in it.

You may alternate between these states at different times.  Also you may infer and assent simultaneously; but you can’t infer and doubt, or assent and doubt, at the same time.

To put it another way:  When you are in a state of doubt, you are questioning whether a thing is true.  It is simply not possible to question and assent to the same proposition at the same time.

Is it hard to commit a mortal sin?

Many Catholics believe that most, if not all people, will go to Heaven.

One reason they give for this belief is the Church’s criteria for a mortal sin: They say you can’t commit a mortal sin unless you are fully aware that committing the act will cut you off from God’s grace and imperil your soul. No one would deliberately cut himself off from God’s grace and go to Hell if he were fully aware of the consequences of doing so — unless he were insane, in which case he can’t be held responsible for his decisions, and therefore can’t commit mortal sin.

By this criteria, they say, hardly anyone could ever actually commit a mortal sin, even when they fear they have done so. Therefore, Hell must be sparsely populated.

But are these really the criteria for a mortal sin?

The Catechism teaches the following: “For a sin to be mortal, three conditions must together be met: ‘Mortal sin is sin whose object is grave matter and which is also committed with full knowledge and deliberate consent.’” CCC 1857. But this doesn’t say what “full knowledge” and “consent” consist of. Full knowledge of and consent to what?

A couple paragraphs down we find an elaboration: “Mortal sin … presupposes knowledge of the sinful character of the act, of its opposition to God’s law. It also implies a consent sufficiently deliberate to be a personal choice.” CCC 1859.

It doesn’t mention full knowledge of cutting yourself off from God’s grace and all that entails.

First, strictly speaking, no human being can have “full knowledge” of all that God’s grace entails. Being finite beings our knowledge is necessarily imperfect, especially where God is concerned. But aside from that, according to the Catechism the knowledge required for a sin to be mortal is not full knowledge of the consequences of the sin, but simply, knowledge that the act is a sinful act.

As to full consent, again this doesn’t mean full consent to being cut off from God’s grace and all that that entails, based on a full knowledge of those matters; but merely, “a consent sufficiently deliberate to be a personal choice”.

In other words, a mortal sin requires you make a personal choice to commit an act involving grave matter, which you’re fully aware is sinful. So if you know full well that adultery is sinful, and make a personal choice to commit adultery, you have committed a mortal sin.

Basically these people are saying that the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to damnation, and there are few who enter through it. But this turns Jesus’ teaching on its head, since he says, “[T]he gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to *destruction*, and there are *many* who enter through it.” Mt. 7:13.

The narrow gate is the other one.

A Recap

[The following is not for general consumption but is a recap of a discussion posted here:  http://www.millennialstar.org/sam-harris-on-science-and-morality/, which I am posting on my own blog as I suspect its length is more than the comments section of the other blog will allow.]

Nothing if not a sacrifice

[Like many of my posts, this is adapted from my part of a discussion with a friend.]

I think the element of sacrifice is insufficiently emphasized nowadays, even though the Sacrifice of the Mass is what our entire religion hangs on. The very purpose of the Church is to join people to Christ so that they can participate in his continual offering of himself to the Father, and thereby be saved.

This is what makes participation at Mass a participation in the Heavenly liturgy:  The fact that we are participating in one and the same sacrifice on earth which Christ continually offers in Heaven. The whole life of the Church, including our individual lives, is one long, continuous offering to the Father, made acceptable by virtue of being united with Christ’s offering of himself.

Communion has no meaning aside from being a participation in the sacrifice offered on the altar.  As St. Paul wrote,

“16Is not the cup of blessing which we bless a sharing in the blood of Christ? Is not the bread which we break a sharing in the body of Christ? … 18Look at the nation Israel; are not those who eat the sacrifices sharers in the altar? … 20 but I say that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God; and I do not want you to become sharers in demons.”  (1 Cor. 10:16ff.)

St. Paul’s point in this context is that Christians should not eat meat sacrificed to idols because when you eat of a sacrifice you are participating in the sacrifice — you are ratifying it, approving it and communing with the “god” to whom the sacrifice is being offered. As Christians we cannot commune with both God and demons.

You see the point:  Communion is not simply a matter of all of us eating the same bread and thereby being united. The point of Communion, and the reason it unites us, is that each of us who eats it is thereby joining in the sacrifice in which the Body was offered — we are not merely united, we are united in sacrifice.

Thus referring to Mass as a celebration and a supper and a thanksgiving, without stressing the sacrificial element, overlooks the essential point. It’s not merely a supper, it’s a sacrificial supper; not merely a thanksgiving but a sacrifice of thanksgiving.

This is the primary thing that differentiates us from the Protestants: They have no priesthood and therefore no continual sacrifice, and absenting themselves from that continual offering is the main thing that makes Protestantism a danger to one’s soul.

I suspect that an effort to make Catholic doctrine palatable to Protestants, around the time of Vatican II, is what led to the de-emphasis of the sacrificial nature of the Mass, and everything connected with it. Protestants have an aversion to the idea of continually offering sacrifice to the Father and thereby averting his anger and satisfying his justice, as if we were primitive people sacrificing oxen or virgins. But in fact that is what we are doing, the difference being that our sacrifice is truly efficacious and actually able to avert God’s anger and satisfy his justice, since it is a pure sacrifice offered by One who is God himself.

I feel that we must begin to re-emphasize this fact. The lack of understanding on this point is part of what makes our Masses so insipid and often ridiculous. When you realize that you are literally offering sacrifice to appease a living God who is offended by sin, it’s harder to take it lightly. (This is where the Traditional Latin Mass excels — not reverence and solemnity for its own sake, but in recognition of the gravity of what is taking place.) Conversely, if the mood at Mass is one of frivolity and fun, is that not insulting to Christ? If you were standing at the foot of the Cross, would you clap and dance and tell jokes?

We mustn’t continue softening this doctrine to avoid offending Protestants, at the cost of failing to instruct our people in the essentials of their own Faith, and watering down our liturgy.

The Post-V2 Lectionary Spares Us from Hell

Not literally from hell, but from hearing much about it:

‘This is but one example in the new lectionary of how the men who promised us “more scripture” [in the post-V2 lectionary] gave us less of its message.’  I hear you.

I came across my own example of editing the scriptures to preserve “niceness” at mass.  The first reading for the Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time is 2 Samuel 12:7-10, 13:

7Nathan said to David, “You are the man! Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, ‘I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you out of the hand of Saul. 8And I gave you your master’s house and your master’s wives into your arms and gave you the house of Israel and of Judah. And if this were too little, I would add to you as much more. 9 Why have you despised the word of the LORD, to do what is evil in his sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and have taken his wife to be your wife and have killed him with the sword of the Ammonites. 10Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife.’ 13 David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the LORD.” And Nathan said to David, “The LORD also has put away your sin; you shall not die.”

Phew!  David got lucky, huh?  He admits that he’s sinned, and gets  off scot-free!  What a sweet, kind God we have!

But what was edited out?  Verses 11-12 say, “11Thus says the LORD, ‘Behold, I will raise up evil against you out of your own house. And I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this sun. 12For you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel and before the sun’”; and verse 14:  ’14Nevertheless, because by this deed you have utterly scorned the LORD, the child who is born to you shall die.”‘

How rude!

What should we conclude?  Were the editors of the post-V2 lectionary promoters of modernism as the linked article suggests?  Maybe, maybe not.  But if not, they seem at least to have thought that Catholics needed to be protected from God — or from his embarrassing lack of tact anyway.  Back off, God!  We don’t need that kind of language in our mass, thank you!  You may be the Lord of Hosts who sends his avenging angel to wreak justice upon the earth, but OUR religion is one of sweetness and light, so you can check that stuff at the door, fella!

What happens at Mass?

‘…where constantly the sacrifice of the cross is represented and with a single difference in the manner of its offering, renewed.’

Is taking the Pill the same as NFP?

Someone asked for an explanation of “why, since the intentions and ideal end result is the same, why taking the Pill is ‘quite a bit different’ than NFP” [Natural Family Planning].”

The premise, apparently, is that taking the Pill and NFP are morally the same. (Let’s assume that by “NFP” we mean restricting sexual intercourse to those days of the month when the female spouse is likely infertile.)

It is asserted that the Pill and NFP are the same because the intentions and ideal end result are the same. What are the intentions and ideal end result? Presumably they would say, to enjoy sexual intercourse while not conceiving a child.

Therefore the argument runs like this:

Major: The Church teaches that it’s immoral to engage in sexual intercourse while having the intention of not conceiving a child.

Minor: Both NFP and the Pill have the same intention.

Conclusion: Both NFP and the Pill are immoral according to the Church’s teaching.

This person doesn’t see how the Pill ends up immoral in the conclusion, while NFP escapes that fate.

However I deny the conclusion since I deny the Major. As affirmed in Humanae Vitae (see paragraph 16), the Church does not teach that it’s immoral to engage in sexual intercourse while having the intention of not conceiving a child. Rather, the Church teaches that it’s immoral to take steps to artificially, i.e. unnaturally, thwart the natural result of sexual intercourse.

Correcting the Major, then, the syllogism runs thus:

Major: The Church teaches that it’s immoral to take steps to artificially, i.e. unnaturally, thwart the natural result of sexual intercourse.

Minor: Both NFP and the Pill artificially, i.e. unnaturally, thwart the natural result of sexual intercourse.

Conclusion: Both NFP and the Pill are immoral according to the Church’s teaching.

But in this case I deny the conclusion because the Minor is false: While the Pill does artificially thwart the natural result of sexual intercourse, NFP does not. Most would agree that the Pill does this, but some may dispute that NFP does not.

But NFP basically consists of two things: (1) abstaining from intercourse during fertile periods; and (2) engaging in intercourse during infertile periods. Which of these is artificial?

I deny that it’s artificial or unnatural to abstain from intercourse during fertile periods. There is nothing unnatural about abstaining from intercourse when one wishes not to conceive a child. In fact there could be nothing more natural. It’s pure common sense. Further, doing so does not thwart the natural result of intercourse, since no intercourse is occurring in the first place.

I deny that it’s artificial or unnatural to engage in intercourse during infertile periods, for the simple reason that there’s nothing unnatural about engaging in intercourse at any time whatsoever.

Therefore there is nothing unnatural or artificial about the practice of NFP.

Some may argue that it’s not the practice of NFP that is artificial, but the intention. But there is nothing unnatural or artificial about choosing not to conceive a child at a particular time; nor does such a choice violate the Church’s teachings, provided one makes the choice for a legitimate reason.

Humanae Vitae itself says,

“It cannot be denied that in each case the married couple, for acceptable reasons, are both perfectly clear in their intention to avoid children and wish to make sure that none will result. But it is equally true that it is exclusively in the former case that husband and wife are ready to abstain from intercourse during the fertile period as often as for reasonable motives the birth of another child is not desirable.”

In my view, it is here that Paul VI points up the salient difference between the Pill and NFP: It’s only in NFP that the couple make the perfectly natural decision to abstain from intercourse at certain times for the purpose of avoiding the conception of a child. Whereas with the Pill, the couple make the unnatural decision to engage in intercourse at any time they please while at the same time intending that no children should result. “In the former the married couple rightly use a faculty provided them by nature. In the latter they obstruct the natural development of the generative process” (HV 16). In the latter case, rather than respecting the reproductive functions, leaving them intact and working around them, they take deliberate action to suppress them, the woman deliberately and artificially rendering herself incapable of conceiving a child, not only at certain times of the month but at all times. It’s this artificially messing around with the reproductive functions that violates the natural law.

As HV says,

“[T]o experience the gift of married love while respecting the laws of conception is to acknowledge that one is not the master of the sources of life but rather the minister of the design established by the Creator. Just as man does not have unlimited dominion over his body in general, so also, and with more particular reason, he has no such dominion over his specifically sexual faculties, for these are concerned by their very nature with the generation of life, of which God is the source.”

NFP respects “the design established by the Creator” and acknowledges that man does not have “unlimited dominion” over his body or over his “specifically sexual faculties”. The Pill does not.

Are all Catholics equally traditional?

Recently I have come across blog posts and comments from Catholics who are displeased that certain Catholics have taken to calling themselves “traditional Catholics”, and the traditional Latin mass — now known as the “Extraordinary Form” of the mass — the “traditional mass”.  (See the posts linked to in this previous post.)

Some of these people have argued that the entire Catholic faith is essentially traditional, in that it has been handed down from generation to generation for twenty centuries (the Latin root word for “tradition” meaning literally “to hand over”), and therefore so are all Catholics.

For the same reason they argue that the mass is essentially traditional, the Ordinary Form as well as the Extraordinary.

Further, they argue that Summorum pontificum has made it juridically inappropriate to consider one mass more traditional then the other (see here).  I’m not clear on the ground for this argument, but apparently it’s something to do with the two forms of the mass now enjoying equal status under Church law.

To me such arguments seem essentially defensive in tone.  Those making them sound as if they are reacting to having been accused of not being traditional enough, and hence not Catholic enough.  And they may well have been accused of that.  Some Catholics who consider themselves “traditional” may well have implied that those who are less tradition-minded are that way because of being less wise or devoted to Catholic truth.

Thus certain Catholics, who consider themselves loyal and faithful, and by no means “Cafeteria Catholics”, are offended at the implication that they are less Catholic than others.  They feel that they are being branded that way merely by virtue of not sharing as strong an affinity for older forms of worship, architecture, music, and art, as some others.  Since these things are not of the essence of the Faith, they feel it an unfair ground of criticism.

Some have gone so far as to argue that such labels as “traditional”, “liberal” and “conservative” are bad in and of themselves, since they divide the Body of Christ into factions.  We should all simply consider ourselves “Catholics”, and should apply no other label to our fellow Catholics than that.

Traditional mass

I myself do refer to the Extraordinary Form of the Latin Rite mass (the “EF”) as the “traditional Latin mass”, or sometimes the “traditional mass” for short.  What I believe to have been the thought process leading to my use of that label is the following:  For a long time people have referred to the Ordinary Form (“OF”) as the “new mass”.  This is perfectly natural since the mass was one way for many, many centuries and then was dramatically changed after Vatican II.  One may argue that the OF is essentially the same as the EF.  Nevertheless to look at the two side-by-side, as they have been commonly celebrated, many external differences immediately jump out at you.  No one argued at the time the OF was introduced that the changes were minimal.  Most everyone perceived them as dramatic (some going so far as to call the differences “essential”).

Since the OF was called the “new mass”, it was natural to refer to the EF as the “old mass”.  However in our modern society the word “old” connotes something that is worn out, outdated and no longer useful.  Think of an old pair of shoes:  “Those are my old shoes.  You can have them if you want.  I don’t need them any more, I have new ones.  If you don’t take them I’ll just throw them out.”  We who prefer the EF don’t like those connotations.

But think of the connotations of “traditional”, as in “the traditional Thanksgiving china”.  When I was a kid my grandma had a set of china and silverware that belonged to her mother, my great-grandma, about 100 years ago.  We would use them every Thanksgiving.  Not that they were better than our newer dishes, but they provided a sense of nostalgia for the past, of continuity with previous generations, and of reverence for those who were no longer with us.

So rather than refer to the EF as the “old mass”, I chose instead to call it the “traditional mass”, connoting time-tested and time-honored, the faith of our fathers, handed down reverently from generation to generation.  This is a perfectly fair contrast to the “new mass”:   which, insofar as it differs from the old, is precisely not time-tested and time-honored, nor was it known to our fathers in the faith, nor handed down continuously from generation to generation for centuries.  That doesn’t make it bad necessarily, just less traditional.

Thus to me, it seemed the perfect adjective for distinguishing the older form of mass from the newer.  There is no necessary implication that the new mass is totally non-traditional, nor that those who like the new mass have rejected all tradition.  What it does intentionally imply is that insofar as the old mass was changed, certain things that were handed down from generation to generation — traditional things — were removed; and things that were not handed down from generation to generation — non-traditional things — were inserted.  Thus insofar as the changes between the old and the new are considered, it’s perfectly fair to consider the old mass more “traditional” than the new.  And since the term only came into use as an alternative to “old”, as a way of distinguishing the two forms of the mass, it’s perfectly fair to refer to the two forms in terms of those changes.

Traditional people

Now I would agree that it’s bad for “traditionalist” Catholics to consider themselves superior to other Catholics.  But is that necessarily what they are doing?  The holding of any opinion implies that contrary opinions are believed to be inferior.  If I didn’t think this opinion was truer than that, I would not hold it.  But is asserting the superiority of a certain set of opinions necessarily equivalent to asserting one’s own superiority?  If it were, then all opinions whatever would be forbidden by Christian charity.

But no, opinions are not forbidden by charity.  I consider the Gospel of Christ to be truer than any other religion.  But it doesn’t follow that I consider myself, as an adherent of the Gospel, to be superior to all non-Christians.

It seems to me that what is uncharitable is to interpret the expression of an opinion as a judgment against those who don’t share that opinion.  It’s uncharitable to assume that those who favor the old mass have judged themselves superior to those who prefer the new.

Who’s judging whom?

But some people object not just to people judging other people, but even to judging one form of the mass to be better than the other.  However let us not forget that for most of the past 40 years, it’s adherents of the new mass who have judged that form of the mass to be superior to the other — even to the extent of using their power to virtually suppress the older form of the mass, such that the majority of American Catholics born after Vatican II have not experienced it even once in their lives.  Even after the issuance of Summorum pontificum, many OF adherents have continued to object to the celebration of the EF, and many bishops and priests who favor the OF have refused to make provision for the celebration of EF masses even when requested to do so; or if they have made provision, have done so only minimally, at odd times and places. 

Thus if the essential problem is people judging one form of the mass to be better than the other, I think that’s a much larger problem, in terms of numbers as well as actual hindrances imposed, on the OF side than on the EF. 

 Be traditional if you want to 

If I may now be frank and controversial:  I can’t help wondering whether underlying the rather defensive tone of people who don’t like the EF being called the “traditional mass”, or EF adherents calling themselves “traditional Catholics”, is a suspicion that the OF really is less traditional, and in a sense, less Catholic, then the EF.  Perhaps it’s hard enough persuading themselves that the OF is every bit as traditional as the EF, and the last thing they need are people stating flat-out that it’s not.

But that’s wild speculation and I admit it.

But be that as it may, there’s nothing unfair or inaccurate about calling the EF the “traditional mass” and EF adherents “traditional Catholics”.  After all, OFers are welcome to apply the same label to themselves and to the OF if they want to.  If the shoe doesn’t seem to fit, that’s not our fault.

Does Donum Veritatis permit dissent?

Interlocutor kindly commented on my post “The Permissibility (or Not) of Dissent“, asking whether the instruction Donum Veritatis (DV), issued in 1990 by the Congregation for the Doctrine for the Faith, doesn’t imply the allowability of a certain degree of dissent.  I hadn’t read DV, but having now had the chance to do so, here is my answer to that question: 

DV first explains the role of theologians in the Church, which is “to pursue in a particular way an ever deeper understanding of the Word of God found in the inspired Scriptures and handed on by the living Tradition of the Church” [para. 6].  This is for the purpose of seeking the “the ‘reasons of faith’” and offering those reasons “as a response to those seeking them”, for “men cannot become disciples if the truth found in the word of faith is not presented to them” [para. 7].  In summary, the theologian helps the People of God to “contemplat[e] ever more deeply, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the contents of the faith itself” and to “present[] the reasonableness of the faith to those who ask for an account of it” [para. 5]. 

Theologians may use “the elements and conceptual tools of philosophy or other disciplines” from the “surrounding culture”, in order to “illumine one or other aspect of the mysteries of faith”, but when it does so, “revealed doctrine … itself must furnish the criteria for the evaluation of these elements and conceptual tools and not vice versa” [para. 10].  There may be “[f]reedom of research”, but in the context of theology such freedom “means an openness to accepting the truth that emerges at the end of an investigation in which no element has intruded that is foreign to the methodology corresponding to the object under study“.  In theology the methodology, as said before, consists in using as the criteria for evaluation “[r]evelation, handed on and interpreted in the Church under the authority of the Magisterium, and received by faith.”  To do otherwise is “to cease doing theology” [para. 12].

It then reflects upon the role of the Magisterium in the Church.  I will assume that Interlocutor and I know and agree what that role is.  If not our differences may become clearer after further correspondence.

It goes on to discuss the collaboration between theologians and the Magisterium:  “The theologian, to be faithful to his role of service to the truth, must take into account the proper mission of the Magisterium and collaborate with it” [para. 20].  It must work with the Magisterium, not against it.  “[T]he theologian is officially charged with the task of presenting and illustrating the doctrine of the faith in its integrity and with full accuracy” [para. 22].

Interlocutor writes, “the assent to infallible teaching (sacred assent) is different from assent to ordinary teaching”.  Maybe so, but is dissent allowed from either?

The way DV puts it is, “When the Magisterium of the Church makes an infallible pronouncement and solemnly declares that a teaching is found in Revelation, the assent called for is that of theological faith.  This kind of adherence is to be given even to the teaching of the ordinary and universal Magisterium when it proposes for belief a teaching of faith as divinely revealed.”  [para. 23]. 

“When the Magisterium proposes ‘in a definitive way’ truths concerning faith and morals, which, even if not divinely revealed, are nevertheless strictly and intimately connected with Revelation, these must be firmly accepted and held” [para. 23]. 

Finally, “[w]hen the Magisterium, not intending to act ‘definitively’, teaches a doctrine to aid a better understanding of Revelation and make explicit its contents, or to recall how some teaching is in conformity with the truths of faith, or finally to guard against ideas that are incompatible with these truths, the response called for is that of the religious submission of will and intellect. This kind of response cannot be simply exterior or disciplinary but must be understood within the logic of faith and under the impulse of obedience to the faith.”  [para. 23]

Thus even the lowest form of teaching mentioned by DV requires “religious submission of will and intellect”.

It is only after setting forth these three levels of magisterial teaching, and the appropriate response to each, that DV begins to discuss “questions under discussion”, in paragraph 24, part of which Interlocutor quotes.  Frankly I’m not certain what “questions under discussion” refers to, but apparently they are of lower import than the three levels of Magisterial teaching just now set forth, since those were set forth in decreasing order of importance and immediately precede this paragraph.  In fact calling them “questions under discussion” seems to indicate that they are not teachings, per se, at all.  Thus to the extent that this paragraph implies the allowability of disagreement with the Magisterium, apparently it’s only to the extent that the Magisterium has not made a formal pronouncement on the question at all, which is why it remains a “question under discussion”.

Next, finally, is mentioned for the first time what might be conceived of as some slight degree of dissent on the part of theologians.  However it does not refer to “dissent” at all, but only says that the theologian may, “according to the case”, raise questions.  But before doing even that, he must “assess accurately the authoritativeness of the interventions which becomes clear from the nature of the documents, the insistence with which a teaching is repeated, and the very way in which it is expressed” [para. 24].

Further on in paragraph 24, we get an admission that “some Magisterial documents might not be free from all deficiencies” — but this refers to “the question of interventions in the prudential order”, in other words questions having to do with practical matters.  This is the context of the other section of paragraph 24 which Interlocutor quotes, concerning “some judgments of the Magisterium” which may have contained “true assertions and others which were not sure”.  It is of these, i.e. Magisterial documents concerning practical matters, that it is said that some “filtering … occurs with the passage of time”.

DV continues, speaking of possible “tensions” which “may arise between the theologian and the Magisterium”, which, depending upon “the spirit with which they are faced” can become “a stimulus to both the Magisterium and theologians to fulfill their respective roles while practicing dialogue”.  [para. 25]  But “[e]ven if the doctrine of the faith is not in question, the theologian will not present his own opinions or divergent hypotheses as though they were non-arguable conclusions” [para. 27].  Thus the theologian must proceed with caution in disagreements with the Magisterium, even when they don’t involve doctrines of the faith.  How much more so when they do?

It then discusses theologians who “might have serious difficulties … in accepting a non-irreformable magisterial teaching”.  But note that it mentions only “difficulties” in accepting — it gives no permission for outright dissent.  If someone does have difficulties, he may not base them on the ground that “the validity of the given teaching is not evident”, or that “the opinion that the opposite position would be the more probable”, nor even on the grounds of “the subjective conscience of the theologian” [para. 28].

Such a theologian must undertake “an intense and patient reflection” and “if need be, … revise his own opinions and examine the objections which his colleagues might offer him” [para. 29].  If after this his difficulties remain, he “has the duty to make known to the Magisterial authorities the problems raised by the teaching in itself, in the arguments proposed to justify it, or even in the manner in which it is presented”.  He must do this “in an evangelical spirit and with a profound desire to resolve the difficulties” [para. 30].

Note DV’s consistent use of the term “difficulties” in this context, as opposed to “dissent”.

Even then, the theologian’s “difficulty” might remain, “because the arguments to the contrary seem more persuasive to him”.  In this case, when “[f]aced with a proposition to which he feels he cannot give his intellectual assent”, is the theologian now permitted to dissent from magisterial teaching?  On the contrary, he “has the duty to remain open to a deeper examination of the question. For a loyal spirit, animated by love for the Church, such a situation can certainly prove a difficult trial. It can be a call to suffer for the truth, in silence and prayer, but with the certainty, that if the truth really is at stake, it will ultimately prevail.”  [para. 31]

Finally DV gets around to discussing “dissent” per se — identifying it immediately as a bad thing, in the chapter heading titled, “The problem of dissent”.  It turns out Paul VI issued an apostolic exhortation of “this problem”, “which must be distinguished from the situation of personal difficulties treated above” [para. 32].  So difficulties in accepting magisterial teaching are not the same as dissent. 

Dissent has “diverse forms” and multiple “remote and proximate causes”, such as “[t]he ideology of philosophical liberalism, which permeates the thinking of our age” and “[t]he weight of public opinion when manipulated and its pressure to conform”.  In any case, “[w]e are dealing … here with something quite different from the legitimate demand for freedom in the sense of absence of constraint as a necessary condition for the loyal inquiry into truth.”  [para. 32]  Indeed, “[t]he freedom of the act of faith cannot justify a right to dissent” [para. 36].  And “[f]inally, argumentation appealing to the obligation to follow one’s own conscience cannot legitimate dissent.” 

So in answer to your question, “Surely development must entail a degree of dissent?”, DVs answer is a clear “no”.  Difficulties may arise, but when that happens, theologians “should seek their solution in trustful dialogue with the Pastors, in the spirit of truth and charity which is that of the communion of the Church” [para. 40].  “To succumb to the temptation of dissent, on the other hand, is to allow the ‘leaven of infidelity to the Holy Spirit’ to start to work” [para. 40].

As Newman famously wrote, “Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt.”  It seems to me that by the same token, it may be said that a thousand theological difficulties do not justify dissent from the authoritative teaching of the Church.  According to DV, one must work through difficulties in concert with the Magisterium, without resorting to the rebellion against authority which is necessarily entailed in dissent.