Francis Schaeffer was a noted Reformed writer, not so much a theologian as a controversialist. His energy was inherited by his son, Franky, who became widely known, when rather young, as an up-and-coming Evangelical — until he ceased to be an Evangelical by becoming Eastern Orthodox. His change of religion coincided, more or less, with a slight change of name: Franky Schaeffer became Frank Schaeffer.
Some of his former co-religionists thought Schaeffer’s rejection of Evangelicalism was even stronger, or at least more sharply toned, than his embrace of Eastern Orthodoxy. However that may be, no one today mistakes Schaeffer fils for an advocate of the distinctively Reformed positions advanced by Schaefferpere. The younger man has left his father’s theological house, having discovered the errors of his father’s ways.
Today Frank Schaeffer edits The Christian Activist, a monthly tabloid that is thin on graphics but thick with opinions. The journal is oddly named; its title suggests a broad Christian appeal, but The Christian Activist really should be called The Orthodox Activist, yet even that name would be too broad, since its editorial position does not reflect the position of most orthodox Orthodox (as distinguished from heterodox Orthodox and ultra-orthodox Orthodox, perhaps). In particular, The Christian Activist is highly anti-Catholic and opposes the ecumenical work engaged in by Pope John Paul II on the Catholic side and Patriarch Bartholomew on the Orthodox side.
The October 1995 issue of The Christian Activist featured a long article by Fr. Alexey Young, a former Catholic who was born in 1943, converted to Eastern Orthodoxy 25 years ago, and now pastors a church in Denver. He seemed to convert with far more ease than many: “Thanks be to God, the moment I spoke those words of renunciation [at his conversion ceremony], all emotional ties with Rome were immediately severed.” Not a good sign.
Scott Hahn converted from Presbyterianism. His Presbyterian background is not something that he has rejected, but something that he has matured out of. Thomas Howard left Anglicanism, but he did not leave behind his affection for that tradition. Ronda Chervin was brought up a Jew and is now a Catholic, but her regard for Judaism is high.
All three have “emotional ties” to their former faiths, and that is quite proper, since those faiths are inextricably linked with friends, events, and, yes, even many truths, which, though found in Catholicism most perfectly, nevertheless are found in those other faiths in part. To severe all “emotional ties” with one’s earlier religion implies not so much a new-found freedom, but a constriction of attitude.
Young says that “this study may be disturbing to some Roman Catholic readers; it contains some things they know, but much that will be new to them.” Actually, the most disturbing things it contains are things that are old–and false. Young recycles Fundamentalist arguments against Catholicism, including arguments that have been debunked repeatedly in This Rock.
In opposing papal infallibility, for instance, he quotes from a speech supposedly given in 1870 at Vatican I. The speaker was Bishop Georg Strossmayer of Croatia: “I do not find one single chapter, or one little verse in which Jesus Christ gives to St. Peter the mastery over the apostles, his fellow-workers. . . . What has surprised me most, and what moreover is capable of demonstration, is the silence of St. Peter himself!”
Young says that “Strossmayer’s view exactly agrees with the understanding of the early Church, both East and West. . . . Strossmayer’s words truly reflect the early Church’s own understanding. Any Catholic can check this out for himself.” But Young should have done some checking of his own. He took this quotation from August Bernhard Hasler’s How the Pope Became Infallible, which purports to be a history of the question. Young accepts and passes along an error Hasler has promoted, one that has been pointed out numerous times in the last century.
The mistake made by Hasler and therefore by Young is one of credulity. They too willingly have believed opponents of Rome. They have unquestioningly attributed to Strossmayer a speech he never made. They have not checked their facts, thinking there to be no need. What Strossmayer purported said sounds right, according to their prejudices, so they printed it. The quotation quoted by Hasler and reproduced by Young did not come from Strossmayer at all–it was a forgery composed by a former Augustinian priest named Jose Augustin de Escudero.
As demonstrated in Karl Keating’s Catholicism and Fundamentalism, Strossmayer’s real position was that he thought the promulgation of the dogma of papal infallibility was inopportune, not incorrect. He feared that the formal declaration of the dogma would hinder ecumenical relations with the Eastern Orthodox. But he did not disbelieve in the dogma, as Hasler and Young would have us think.
Young makes other mistakes. One example: He misunderstands what Pope Gregory the Great was saying whe n he rejected the title “Universal Bishop.” Young thinks he meant that a pope is no more than the patriarch of the West, equal in all ways to the other patriarchs, while what Gregory really meant was that the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome does not eviscerate the real episcopal powers and authority of the bishops scattered throughout the world.
It is not the case, as some once argued, that only the pope is a full bishop, while all the other bishops are his mere helpers. Theologians who argued this way tried to make the bishops into glorified priests, not real successors to the apostles. Gregory properly rejected their interpretation, but did not reject or fail to teach the extraordinary jurisdiction and power granted the Successor of Peter.
Again, this is an argument heard almost exclusively from anti-Catholic Fundamentalists. It seems odd coming from someone in a church so like our own. But Young does not seem concerned about where he gets his ammunition: He has found a bully club to wield against Rome, and that is enough.
He issues this warning to his fellow believers: “Orthodox patriarchs, bishops, priests, and theologians–all you who actively pursue a policy of rapprochement with Rome: Beware. You are trying to bring the Orthodox Church into a lion’s den of unbelievable malignancy. You cannot save the Catholic Church, but the Catholic Church can and will contaminate and then destroy you.”
Young complains that “Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople unbelievably hailed John Paul as a ‘brother Patriarch’ on Good Friday of 1993 and spoke of Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism as ‘the two lungs of the Body of Christ.’ This, Bartholomew boldly declared, ‘is a fundamental ecclesiological truth.’ Some thoughtful Orthodox thought he had taken leave of his senses.”
On and on it goes, through nearly ten large tabloid pages. What is more disappointing than Young’s wholesale adoption of anti-Catholic arguments from Fundamentalists is Schaeffer’s willingness to print an article as poorly reasoned as Young’s. It’s one thing to argue for one’s position. It’s another to make a botch of it.
By printing articles such as Young’s (not, by the way, the only writer to have promoted the fake Strossmayer speech in the pages of The Christian Activist), Schaeffer exhibits a recklessness we do not recall being associated with his father. The son may have moved up theologically– Orthodoxy is a lot closer to us than is Protestantism–but he has a way to go before being taken seriously as a critic of Rome. He does not solidify his own reputation by publishing such badly research articles as Young’s.
Catholics can be consoled in knowing that the positions espoused in The Christian Activist are not held by the leaders of most of Orthodoxy. While Patriarch Bartholomew may be ahead of many of his brethren in his openness to Rome, most of them are on the trail he is blazing, not the side route that Young and Schaeffer have strayed onto.
Speaking of papal infallibility, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger has affirmed that the Church’s teaching that ordination is reserved to males is an infallible teaching. The confirmation, which refers to the teaching contained in Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, states:
“This teaching requires definitive assent, since, founded on the written Word of God, and from the beginning constantly preserved and applied in the Tradition of the Church, it has been set forth infallibly by the ordinary and universal magisterium (cf. Second Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church [Lumen Gentium], 25:2).
“Thus, in the present circumstances, the Roman Pontiff, exercising his proper office of confirming the brethren (cf. Luke 22:32), has handed on this same teaching by a formal declaration, explicitly stating what is to be held always, everywhere, and by all, as belonging to the deposit of faith.
“The Sovereign Pontiff John Paul II, at the audience granted to the undersigned Cardinal Prefect, approved this reply, adopted in the ordinary session of this Congregation [for the Doctrine of the Faith], and ordered it to be published.”
The document was signed by Cardinal Ratzinger and by Archbishop Tarcisio Bertone, who is the Secretary of the Congregation.
So what does this mean? It means that the doctrine that women cannot be ordained is infallible and unchangeable. The doctrine “has been set forth infallibly in the ordinary and universal magisterium,” as that is explained in Lumen Gentium.
Many Catholics are under the impression that infallible decrees are issued only by a pope and that there have been only two such decrees in the history of the Church, one defining the Immaculate Conception, the other defining the Assumption. This is a serious misunderstanding of infallibility.
True, those two dogmas have been defined infallibly, but papal infallibility is the least common mode by whic h the Church’s infallibility is exercised. More common are the binding dogmatic decrees of ecumenical councils–the Council of Trent alone was stuffed with them, and nearly every council has issued some.
Yet there is a wider and perhaps more common form of infallible teaching, that which comes through the “ordinary and universal magisterium.” Papal ex cathedra statements and the decrees of ecumenical councils are forms of the extraordinary magisterium. The ordinary magisterium, we might say, is the constant day-to-day teaching of the Church.
A doctrine is taught infallibly if it has been taught by the Church consistently through the centuries. Take the bodily (rather than “spiritual”) Resurrection of Christ. No pope has issued an infallibly definition regarding it, nor has any ecumenical council; there has been no need to. The doctrine has been taught infallibly because it has been taught universally and consistently. That is enough.
It is the same with the male-only priesthood. In fact, the teaching on that topic had been so thoroughly “received” by Catholics throughout the centuries that not until the last thirty years or so has any Catholic suggested ordaining women. There had been no need for the Church to issue any statement at all on the subject because no one until our own time was denying the teaching.
At the level of theory the subject is closed. It is not yet closed at the level of pressure politics. The Women’s Ordination Conference and similarly-minded extremist groups have not submitted to the teaching, and there is no likelihood that adherents to such organizations will. Probably they will continue to agitate for a while; after all, many of these people have devoted the bulk of their adult energies to the issue, and they are too closely identified with the losing side to give up the battle gracefully.
But their younger heirs, who have not invested as much, will. This is not to say they will offer a ready assent of mind and heart. Prob ably most of them will not. But neither will they resolve to fight from within. There will be no purpose, their cause being hopeless–not for lack of will or numbers (although they may think those are the reasons), but because what they promote is simply false.
Penpoint is the newsletter issued by the Southern California Center for Christian Studies, an organization of one headed by Greg Bahnsen, the chief spokesman for the views of the late Cornelius Van Til, best known for his presuppositional (as distinguished from evidential) apologetics.
Van Til’s position was that no headway can be made if one tries to use the form of apologetics favored by most others. In traditional apologetics, you first prove the existence of God. You use basic principles of logic that any non-believer will accept. Eventually you work up to the divinity of Christ and the existence of the Church. Van Til opposed this method. He said you must presuppose the Bible as God’s Word. Only then can you hope to construct an apologetic that really answers the concerns of non-believers.
Not surprisingly, this position has not found wide favor; in Bahnsen’s newsletter it produces some unexpected results. In a recent issue Robert R. Booth’s Children of the Promise was reviewed. The book supports infant baptism, and so does the reviewer (and so does Bahnsen). Now you normally don’t expect Protestants to be in favor of infant baptism, but here is the doctrine–with a twist.
Using Scripture, the reviewer asserts infants should be baptized because baptism is the New Covenant’s replacement for the Old Covenant’s circumcision. “If the new covenant is essentially the same as the old and the old covenant included believers and their children, it follows that the children of believers in the new dispensation are likewise included in the covenant.”
So far, so good. It gets momentarily better, with the reviewer referring to baptism as a “sacrament” that “symbolizes and secures entrance into the covenant.” But then he, following Booth, stops. He does not want to be taken for someone who believes that baptism is regenerative. He says that he and others who believe in infant baptism “utterly reject the Roman Catholic dogma that children are magically regenerated by the water of baptism.”
But the use of “magically” shows us that the reviewer doesn’t know what a sacrament really is. Too bad he hasn’t read Frank Sheed’s lucid explanation. Sheed notes that a sacrament is the antithesis of magic, which seeks supernatural power to effect a natural end. In a sacrament, a natural act (pouring water and saying words) effects a supernatural end (the infusion of grace–in the case of baptism, regeneration of the soul by water).