Karlo Broussard helps a caller navigate the many rules and dogmas of the Catholic Church.
Transcription:
I’m a non-Catholic. I’ve been listening, I’ve been studying Catholicism for about four or five months now, I guess. You know, I finally decided there’s so many things that are just so beyond what I am used to from my upbringing that I thought, “Well, I’m going to start listening.” So I started with Pines with the Aquinas, I went to Trent Horn,
I listened to Call to Communion, and now here I am on your guys’ show.
Oh, you were working uphill that whole time. It was getting better and better as you went. Excellent.
Yeah, well, it’s been very, very intriguing. But it just seems a bit overwhelming to me. I’m sure I’d be almost excommunicated from my family, or some of them anyways. But, you know, there are so many things. Like, there’s plenary indulgences, there’s this deposit of faith, there’s obligations. It just seems like there are so many rules that have been over, you know, the last couple of thousand years. So I guess that’s kind of a stumbling block for me. I’m guessing I know more about Catholicism than a lot of the people that are coming into the Catholic Church, just from listening to you guys’ podcasts over the last number of months.
Well, Stacey, let’s let Carlo take a shot at where all this came. At least that’s the way I understood the question, is where did all these rules come from? These rules and practices and where did all that get added on?
And yeah, go ahead, Carlo. Yeah, so Stacey, first of all, I think I would agree with you that in the six months that you’ve been listening to all of these Catholic, different Catholic radio programs, you probably do know more now than the majority of Catholics sitting in the pew on Sundays. And that’s an unfortunate thing. And we’re working on that, brother, because there are some parishes where you have some really good equipped Catholics sitting in the pew on Sundays and some parishes, not so. So my first thought is, I would just extend the invitation for you to join the church and come tell us how to show us how it’s done, brother.
So that would be my first thought. Now, with regard to your question about the rules, notice how in Acts chapter 15 at the Council of Jerusalem, you have the apostles and the elders convened in the council to declare a theological truth concerning God’s revelation, circumcision does not save, rather were saved by grace through faith. St. Peter declares that. What’s interesting is Jesus never taught us that, but the Holy Spirit moved St. Peter to declare that to us. Now, my point is that later in that council, James proposes some disciplinary precepts to govern the relationship of members of the household of God, namely the church, the relationship between the Gentile Christians and the Jewish Christians. In order to meet some of the sensibilities of Jewish Christians and help Jewish converts and Gentile converts to Christianity get along, the council fathers declare and impose upon Gentile Christians disciplinary precepts forbidding them to partake of meats that were offered and sacrificed to pagan deities, even though they’re free to eat the meat, but there’s a disciplinary precept imposed also to abstain from blood and any meats not fully drained of blood. Now, notice there, Stacey, that those are rules that come about in the life of the church that’s not specified by our Lord at the beginning. Now, what we see there, Stacey, is rules being developed in order to, as I emphasized earlier, govern the relationship of the members of God’s family, the children of God within the household of God, namely the church. And so the same can be said of certain rules, as you put it, that develop in our history as Catholics, that the church develops in order to do what? To exercise her ministry as mother and govern the children of God within the household of God, namely the church, which St. Paul calls the church in 1 Timothy 3.15. So as I point out in that chapter of my book, “Prepare the Way,” we can show that rules are not in and of themselves bad. They actually can serve the good. We see this in mundane examples. We need rules for sports in order for children to enjoy, and even adults, to enjoy playing sports. If no rules, then you ain’t going to have any fun playing sports. The rules are meant to govern and order the game so that we can enjoy the game and also to exclude any sort of unnecessary harm from the games. And so similarly, with regard to the household of God and the game of being a Christian, you might say, and being a son and a daughter of God and living within the church that Jesus Christ established, there are going to be certain rules that develop, subject to the governance of God. They’re going to be subject to the governance of the overseers, the bishops, in order to keep us children spiritually safe, to help foster this “game” of being in relationship with Jesus Christ. Some of the rules are ordered toward that relationship with Jesus to help us grow in holiness. And you know, Stacy, this is implied, it’s implicit in the very command that Jesus gives the apostles in Matthew 18, 18, “Whatever you bind on earth is bound in heaven. Whatever you loose on earth is loosed in heaven.” And that language, Stacy, is charged with judicial authority. That’s the language that was used for Jewish rabbis having judicial authority, authority to govern God’s people, to exclude some, to readmit some, to impose laws, bind, to re- to retain, to bind to loose laws, that is, to no longer have the laws binding. Now notice what that implies. That implies that there are going to be laws to be imposed and not imposed. And that also implies that there’s going to be a variety of laws for different times and different circumstances. Why? Again, to govern the people of God. So that’s sort of an explanation, Stacy, as to the rationale behind the laws. And there are other things that I say in the chapter in my book, “Prepare the Way,” that can help you with this obstacle that you’re facing. But hopefully you can see that laws in and of themselves are not bad. And finally, I would say this, Stacy, if the claim is made there are too many laws, too many rules, well then I would invite you to ponder the question, “Well, what’s the number of rules that’s the right amount such that I would become Catholic if the rules were at that number?” So notice how the claim that there are too many rules is a bit of an arbitrary standard that’s presupposed. What counts as too many and what counts as a sufficient number such that one can join the church? And I would argue, and I would submit to you, Stacy, that there’s really no boundary of number of rules in principle that we could determine that would create that line to say, “Well, across the line we can’t join the church because it’s too many, and it has to be on this other side of the line.” I don’t think there’s any sort of boundary in principle that we can determine. And so this is why we look to the church that Jesus established with that authority to create some of the rules that we need to help govern our relationship with the Lord, and also to protect and to govern how we relate to the divine revelation itself, how we meditate on it, and the things that we draw forth from it.