Transcript

In Matthew Chapter 23, Jesus criticized the most righteous religious leaders of his day, saying they hurt people by demanding they follow rules that God never required.

Jesus said, They bind heavy burdens hard to bear and lay them on men's shoulders.

In the world of online Catholicism, there are loud voices that also bind heavy burdens upon the faithful, burdens that the church does not require.

So in today's episode, I'm going to focus on the danger of what I call Catholic fundamentalism.

Now, I don't like a similar term that often comes up in these contexts, radical traditionalism.

That's because there's nothing wrong with being traditional or preferring more traditional forms of liturgy or devotions.

There's also nothing wrong with wanting to live a more traditional lifestyle.

But traditionalism turns into fundamentalism when those good yet optional traditions get imposed on everyone.

For example, there's nothing wrong with a family that doesn't use natural family planning, or NFP, and is simply prepared for whatever number of children that proceed from their union, provided they can give those children a dignified life.

But it is wrong to demand that everyone live that way and reject natural family planning as being sinful.

You cannot prohibit what the church permits.

Oddly enough, Catholic fundamentalists act like Catholic liberals but reach the opposite conclusions.

For example, on contraception, the far left and the far right say there is no moral difference between contraception and NFP. The liberals say that we should treat contraception like NFP and say contraception is not sinful, and the far right say that we should treat NFP like contraception, both of them being sinful.

Liberals err in permitting what the church prohibits, and fundamentalists err in prohibiting what the church permits.

Both groups fall into error because each rejects what the teaching office, the living magisterium of Christ Church says.

And Catholic fundamentalists often exhibit a strange inconsistency on this point.

On the one hand, they'll lord the bishops and the Pope over Protestants, and even Eastern Orthodox, saying the bishops are the reason Catholicism does not have the doctrinal chaos other groups have.

But on the other hand, they'll also say the bishops are a bunch of modernist heretics, and so you don't have to listen to them, especially the Pope, who they simply call Bergoglio.

What a message, right?

Become Catholic and leave the subjective poison of Protestantism, but don't listen to the church's heretical leaders.

Instead, just follow this Catholic influencer on social media.

Well, how is that different from a Protestant who follows his favorite pastor on YouTube?

What you end up with is an online magisterium that makes demands upon the faithful that the real magisterium does not require, and they often do this by finding anything, a previous council or pope or saint said in the past, and then claim this is some kind of infallible, universal teaching that still applies today.

They even try to outdo each other in a behavior called purity spiraling.

For example, some fundamentalists will say that licit sexual behavior between husbands and wives is actually sinful, and then others will go further than them and say, quote, Kissing and handholding before marriage are forbidden according to Catholic moral theology.

Others will go even further and cite past saints and councils and say that any kind of dancing between unmarried people is sinful.

Well, what's wrong with swing dances?

What's wrong with ballroom dances?

Well, I can assure you at these other dances that the devil has set up a snare, a web to get our good young men and women.

We're gonna talk about that right now.

The saints have already condemned these.

The church has already said, Don't go to these kind of dances.

These man and woman, one boy, one girl, one young man, one young woman, unmarried, don't go to these dances.

Fundamentalists defend these opinions not by appealing to current church teaching, but by their own private interpretation of any past church document that they come across, and they assume that these documents, which may just contain suggestions rather than infallibly binding teachings, were universally binding then and are still binding today.

They even say that we cannot trust what current church teaching and leadership says on these very issues.

For example, a few years ago, I debated Jacob Emam on the question of whether it is immoral to invest in 401s for retirement.

I asked him, if this kind of investing was sinful, why haven't the bishops condemned this practice?

And more importantly, why do so many bishops actively support 401s by contributing to their own employees' accounts even though they do not support other modern sinful things?

For example, the bishops do not pay for their employees to get in vitro fertilization or abortions.

Here was Jacob's answer.

The bishops, modern bishops, I'll say, um, I'm not sure if they're really the, the, the pillars of light that maybe we once saw in the early church.

I'm not sure if they're really the ones that we want to follow today.

Jacob went on to say that we should obey the bishops but claimed that they hadn't made any authoritative teachings on 401s and so we don't have to worry about what they say on this matter.

But that's not the argument.

Something can be good even if the church doesn't say so.

The church doesn't have an authoritative teaching on Ultimate Frisbee, but I don't have to wait for that teaching before I go play it, and I don't have to refrain from playing it just because some layperson says that it's sinful because of their private interpretation of past church documents.

If investing in 401s were gravely sinful- then the church would explicitly say so, like it does with other modern evils, like in vitro fertilization or surrogacy.

And more importantly, if it were evil, the bishops would not formally cooperate with this evil by making it a part of their employee compensation packages.

It could only be gravely evil if you think the bishops have no divinely protected teaching authority whatsoever, and if you believe that, then you've rejected the essence of Catholicism, that Christ's teaching authority comes just through the bishops.

As Jesus said to the apostles in Luke 10:16, He who hears you, hears me.

Now I agree, some of the bishops have made really bad judgments, and some individual bishops may be doctrinally suspect.

But to say all the living bishops are untrustworthy, which is what you would have to say if you said 401s are evil, because I don't know any bishop that opposes 401s, and that you need to go somewhere else for moral guidance, well, that was the attitude of the Protestant Reformers.

They said that the Church of the 16th century had become corrupt, and in many ways, it was corrupt, through practices like simony, the buying and selling of church offices, or sexual sin among the clergy.

But the Protestant Reformers' answer was not to simply go back to the Bible.

The Reformers claimed that they were returning to the apostolic origins of the Church Fathers.

John Calvin said in a 1539 letter to Cardinal Sadoleto, You know, Sadoleto, not only that our agreement with antiquity is far closer than yours, but that all we have attempted has been to renew the ancient form of the Church.

Philip Melancthon, an early Lutheran, said, It is not safe to receive any dogma of which no testimony at all exists in the ancient Church.

Gavin Ortlund even recently released a video showing that the Protestant Reformers tried to recapture what they thought was the true apostolic Church of the past.

They didn't only go back to the Bible, and that's the same mentality of Catholic fundamentalists.

They think the true Church is found within their private interpretation of scripture and past tradition, just like the Reformers thought, and that it's not found in the present-day teaching office of the Church.

Once again, that doesn't mean every single bishop is right about everything they say, but Catholics cannot ignore what all the bishops currently teach or permit, and Catholics cannot impose obligations on others that the teaching office of the Church does not require.

For example, some fundamentalists claim it is gravely sinful for wives to work outside of the home.

As I said before, this has nothing to do with traditionalism.

Ideally, mothers should be home with their young children, but it's wrong to say that mothers working outside the home, even part-time, is gravely sinful, because that's not what the Church teaches.

To sustain their view, Catholic fundamentalists have to ignore what the Church has actively taught over the past 60 years.

If being a working wife was gravely sinful, then why do Catholic bishops allow married women to work for them, like in their schools?

Why doesn't the Catechism prohibit working wives?

Why did the Church canonize Saint Gianna Molla, who according to the Vatican biography of her, harmonized the demands of mother, wife, doctor, and her passion for life?

Why did Pope Saint John Paul II say, There is an urgent need to achieve real equality in every area, like equal pay for equal work, and protection for working mothers?

Why did Pope John XXIII say, Women must be accorded such conditions of work as are consistent with their needs and responsibilities as wives and mothers?

The usual fundamentalist explanation reeks of Protestantism.

They'll say that these teachings come from the corrupt modernist bishops, and so they can be ignored.

The true Catholic faith is found further back in history, which is also what sedevacantists say, and what Protestants also say.

These Catholic fundamentalist explanations also sound like Protestants, who cherry pick parts of Church history that they agree with, while ignoring the other parts that contradict their views.

For example, Catholic fundamentalists often quote this part of the 16th century Roman Catechism that says, Unless compelled by necessity to go abroad, wives should also cheerfully remain at home and should never leave home without the permission of their husbands.

They say this means wives can't work outside the home, but this passage doesn't say anything about working.

I mean, are wives allowed to do non-necessary things beyond the home, like attend playdates or homemaking classes at other women's houses?

Do they have to call their husband every time they go out to the store to run an errand to get his permission to leave the house?

This sounds more like a prudential judgment of the 16th century, not a perpetual moral command that must be followed under pain of grave sin.

But most importantly, those who quote this passage ignore other things the Roman Catechism teaches.

For example, just a few paragraphs later, the Roman Catechism says that married couples should abstain from sex for three days before receiving communion, and even longer during Lent.

Does that rule still apply today?

And the Roman Catechism also says you should not marry someone against their parents' wishes, or marry against your own parents' wishes.

But here's Tim Gordon, a Catholic who often quotes this passage, saying you don't need the permission of your future father-in-law in order to marry his daughter, and can even marry that woman against the father's wishes.

He's not the authority.

It's not his involvement.

Asking the father things, uh, about your relationship, starting with whether or not you have permission to get married, is kind of like asking your neighbor whether you have permission to decorate your own house.

That's between you and the wife, or the future wife, not between him.

But that contradicts the Roman Catechism, which says children are, quote, Not to engage in marriage without their parents' knowledge, still less in defiance of their expressed wishes.

The truth is that the nature of work has changed so much over the past 500 years that a wife who tutors children a few hours a week outside the home is far less disruptive to her home life than some so-called trad wives who stay home but spend six hours a day making videos where they pretend to spontaneously make homemade cereal for their kids.

This is why we have a magisterium that tells us what past statements are morally binding today and which are not.

Catholic fundamentalists might say, Well, they're just reading the documents and accepting the document's plain meaning, but that's the same thing Protestant fundamentalists say about the Bible.

What seems like the plain meaning of a text may not plainly apply today.

For example, some fundamentalists say that women still must veil in church because St. Paul says in First Corinthians 11, Any woman who prays or prophesies with her head unveiled dishonors her head.And if a woman will not veil herself, then she should cut off her hair.

But the congregation for the doctrine of the faith says such requirements no longer have a normative value; i.e., they are transitory disciplines, they are not binding today.

Even Cardinal Burke says, quote, It is not, however, a sin to participate in the Holy Mass according to the extraordinary form without a veil.

Once again, it is the church's magisterium found in the teaching of the bishops that tells us what past biblical and magisterial statements are binding upon believers today, not online influencers.

Finally, fundamentalist Catholics want to follow church teachings and attitudes from centuries ago, while often retaining a 21st century attitude of contempt toward the church's current magisterium.

They say things online that would have gotten them flogged in the Middle Ages.

Even in the 20th century, Pope Saint Pius X said, quote, With the pastoral body only rests the necessary rite and authority for promoting the end of the society and directing all its members towards that end.

The one duty of the lay multitude is to allow themselves to be led, and like a docile flock, to follow the pastors.

As faithful Catholics, we should avoid the error of the far left that ignores the magisterium in order to make evil good, like saying contraception is as good as NFP. And we should avoid the error of the far right that ignores the magisterium in order to make good evil, like saying NFP is as bad as contraception.

Instead, we should be faithful to what the church teaches in sources like the Catechism or the Code of Canon Law, and we should listen to the exhortation found in Hebrews 13:17.

It says, Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls as men who will have to give account.

We should obey, but we can also make our needs known to our pastors, and even offer charitable criticism when appropriate, when it is done for the good of the church as a whole.

And for more on how to understand church teaching, how to grapple with it, struggle with it, how to understand which church teachings apply today and which do not, check out the links in the description below.

So thank you all so much for watching, and I hope you have a very blessed day.