The Catholic Church is Now Pissing Off the People Who Actually Like Them

The profession of faith is something to be mumbled verbatim with no thought, not something to be read and signed!

 You mean it’s a “click-through”?

It’s like with the bible, and downloading the new iTunes; no one actually reads it – you just scroll to the bottom and click “I agree”!

This was my favorite from the comments on the article:  

“There is so much confusion in the Church these days–what is needed is less dialogue and more dogma. ”

Yep.  That’ll fix it.    

From a comment on another blog,  by otrame : “faith is gullibility dressed in it’s Sunday best.”  I could not say it better.

Then you get turned into a HumancentiPad.

 Did you actually read the article? They would not be excommunicated, they would just not be allowed to teach Sunday school.

Yes. To which the proper and rational response is:

The bishops are human, and sometimes their judgment is not God’s
judgment. We always have to be vigilant about that. The Holy Spirit
gives us the responsibility to look into our own consciences.

And we should be clear that “bishops” includes the Bishop of Rome.

This shows how little the Catholic Church’s faith is in their members.

I can only shake my head sadly at people who don’t even comprehend that the family name was not “Christ.” Mary and Joseph Christ indeed! And Mary’s maiden name was…..? Jesus name would not have even been Jesus. He was not Roman. He was Hebrew. His given name would have been more likely Jeshua or Joshua, if he ever really even existed as portrayed in the book of ancient, anonymous, mistranslated, unprovable documents.

Well, except for the signing, dating, and witnessed.

Not all churches…
.
Since we are talking about one particular church, the Holy Roman Catholic Church, I have to wonder what point you think you are making.

What? Of course not.

Look, if I showed up at a Buddhist Temple and said I really liked a lot of things about Buddhism, and believed a lot of it but thought they were wrong about some important things… I think they’d probably welcome my questions and I could reasonably expect them to honor my own independence of thought. But I’d feel a little silly demanding that I be installed as a teacher of Buddhism.

This is why I love Catholics, they say stuff that seems like a poe but they’re not as appalling as the fundies.

Indeed, but we are not talking about Buddhists here, are we? We are talking about Catholics. Name one instance where people have questioned the official Catholic teachings and have been warmly embraced by the hierarchy to the extent that “they’d probably welcome my questions and I could reasonably expect them to honor my own independence of thought.”

If the RCC were in any way serious about such an enterprise, they wouldn’t be asking people to sign such a rigid and authoritative declaration that actively inhibits such behaviour?

Why would you feel silly, are not your opinions of equal or better calibre to those in authority? If not, why hold them in the first place? Surely it would be better, if one truly believed what one held to be true to be actually true, to work within the system rather than outside of it?

As Hemant has alluded to both here and in other posts, what business does anyone have being a Catholic if your beliefs are so far detached from the official church doctrine? By that token, what business does the church have investing time and effort in your anti-Catholic practices? 

 No. Generally, informed atheists would not even consider demanding that their employees sign loyalty oaths policing their thoughts. Being a minority that experiences discrimination, we’re well aware of where that trend leads, and of how, even as private citizens, it violates the spirit of the Constitution. That’s what irrational, powerful entities do, and it isn’t at all compatible with Humanism anyway.

Name one instance? It happens all the time. What do you imagine goes on at Catholic university theology classes? Or in RCIA classes for prospective converts? Or in official avenues of ecumenical/intereligious dialogue? Or when Catholics express doubts or disagreements to their pastors?

I agree completely with the point you’re making when you ask “If not, why hold them in the first place?” But here’s the critical distinction. I wouldn’t (and don’t) feel silly disagreeing with the teachings of a given form of Buddhism. But given those disagreements, I would certainly feel silly insisting on my right to teach Buddhism to Buddhist children.

As is demonstrated weekly by American Catholics beyond number, the church can be a very welcoming place for those who dissent from her teachings. But declining to name such a person as a parish catechist is surely not unreasonable?

In general – and I’m not directing this to you personally – critics have to choose between beating the Church with the “lots of Catholics dissent from its teaching” stick or beating it with the “crushing of independent thought” stick. But surely one can’t have both.

We should probably admit that much depends on one’s personal or anecdotal experience with the Church, which is of real but limited objective value. Clearly a lot of people have suffered various forms of intellectual abuse at the hands of the clergy. If the Church taught that clergy didn’t sin, this would be a pretty damning circumstance. But the hierarchy sometimes being jerks doesn’t affect the truth of Catholicism any more than atheists being jerks affects the truth of atheism. In both cases, the model predicts and accounts for the possibility that any given member may be stupid, wrong, or wicked. And that includes the Pope.

But I really do think my experience of independent thought and reasoning being encouraged is far more typical than others’ experience of it being discouraged. I further think that it can be shown to be in harmony with the actual teaching of the Catholic church, while the stifling of rationality can be shown to be in disharmony with it.

You’re using the language of coercion and that isn’t a good fit for this situation. Choosing teachers who believe in what they’re signing up to teach is not accurately described as “demanding…loyalty oaths” or “policing their thoughts.”

Will I try your patience if I attempt another analogy? Let’s say I apply for a job as a Professor of Evolutionary Biology and note in the interview that I’m a Creationist and think evolution is a bunch of bunk. When they choose someone else over me, does that constitute the demanding of a loyalty oath, or the policing of thought?

How is this different, except in the degree of the magnitude of the dissent?

Maybe faith isn’t the right word, but the Church wants to force commitment from its members, commitment they see they’re losing.  It’s very much about the members, indoctrinated members that financially contribute and vote, or will become contributors and voters.   It’s where their power comes from.

 Err, I would guess it is more like. There is a census, so these guys say they are Catholic, and the Catholic church looks very powerful. So they try to use this power on politicians to push their discriminatory, sexist, anti-progress beliefs.  But in reality, no one actually believes their dogma. It is worse in Latin America, where they can claim to be the majority’s religion even though no one really cares that much about their dogma.

So, that’s something that can make you sick, if these people were honest to themselves and admitted they are not really Catholic, we could get rid of that problem.

Of course the family name was Christ. And the first name was Jesus. But people get the middle initial wrong quite frequently. It’s actually “F”.

If I ran a charter school as you describe, I’d consider it highly inappropriate (and probably illegal) to require the teachers to sign a Profession of Disbelief. What I would expect of them is that they could effectively teach the curriculum required by the school’s charter. What their actual beliefs were would not matter, unless they prevented them from teaching the material.

If the Catholic school has a problem with the performance of the teachers, that’s one thing. But playing Big Brother and trying to manage the internal beliefs of the teachers is inappropriate. Of course, it’s doomed to failure, since anybody can lie to keep their job, and it smacks of a kind of desperation that comes from seeing a decline in membership, major shifts in the opinions of members, and a significant loss of respect for the Church leadership by the laity.

I agree that there are cases in which personal belief need not pertain to efficacy of teaching. I can imagine that someone who denied the principle of noncontradiction and therefore denied the validity of mathematics could still teach 2nd graders their multiplication tables. Teaching religion or philosophy is different from that.

Maybe I’ll be most clear if I systematize:
1) It is likely that one’s teaching presentation of a religion will be affected by whether one holds the religion to be true.
2) It is reasonable for religious leaders to take an interest in how the religion is presented.
3) Therefore it is reasonable for religious leaders to choose teachers based partly on their acceptance of the religion.

It seems you’re disagreeing with #1 and holding that religion is like multiplication tables, and that one’s acceptance or denial of the religion is absolutely irrelevant to one’s capacity to teach it. Is that our point of divergence?

Part of our disagreement might be rooted in my belief that catechism is not just about passing information, but about being convincing. There’s a sense in which I do want people to reach their own conclusions about – for instance – rape, but I care very much that the conclusion they reach is the correct one. Very much indeed. And I wouldn’t choose someone who endorsed rape to teach a class on Christian morality, no matter how much they pledged to be accurate. Isn’t that reasonable? And if so, why shouldn’t the same principle apply to less extreme and clear-cut examples?

Applying for a job teaching evolutionary biology and letting slip that you are a creationist who doesn’t ‘believe’ in evolution would simply tell me that you don’t have the required level of education and understanding of the material to effectively teach it. Expecting that one would have that education and understanding of their subject isn’t the same as demanding loyalty or policing their thoughts.

All teaching is about more than passing information.

As it happens, I’m on the board of a charter school. We expect our teachers to effectively teach evolution, and to effectively teach how humans are changing the climate. Both are controversial and both require skilled teaching. I do not know the personal opinions of either of our teachers with respect to these subjects. I know they are teaching the material effectively, which is what matters.

Teaching religion is no different. We know that many pastors and priests are atheists, and their congregations are unable to tell. It isn’t about beliefs, but about the ability to teach. The Catholic school under discussion here hasn’t suggested that their teachers are failing in any way.

Asking for a loyalty pledge is fundamentally un-American… something we associate with authoritarian regimes. Of course, the Catholic Church is the ultimate authoritarian regime, so we shouldn’t really be surprised. But neither should we be surprised that this absurd and ultimately useless imposition is pissing off a lot of their own members.

If you go to them and ask to teach, they should rightfully test your knowledge. They should test your teaching skills. But what point is there in asking what you believe? Anybody can lie about that.

The point is to be consistent with their own metaphysical views. To them, the belief itself is significant and has effects. Given that stance, it is reasonable for them to ask, even if they have no way of checking to see if a person answers truthfully.

Besides, is there any other arena (besides, possibly, the practice of criminal law) you can think of where the preferred course is to not ask a question simply because the answer given might not be truthful?

To see if I’m understanding you: 
It seems you’re proposing a sort of Turing Test, if I may invoke  another Patheos.com favorite. You believe that someone who didn’t fully profess Catholicism could be indistinguishable as a catechist from someone who did. I don’t agree. Is that a fair assessment from your perspective?

That’s not quite what I’m arguing, but it’s reasonably close.

I think it is a fact that atheists are able to teach religion in a way that is indistinguishable from the way theists teach it. And in this case, we’re (presumably) not talking about something as radical as atheism vs. theism, but simply the degree to which people consider their church’s leadership to be infallible. Asking them to attest to this proves nothing and changes nothing… except whatever the effects are of a bunch of disgruntled employees (not to mention their friends and family).

I see the point you’re arguing, but as someone who was raised Catholic and nearly entered the seminary, I understand the inverse as well.  Catholics believe in the infallibility of the Church on matters of faith and morals. There are no “different interpretations” to be had.  If you believe the Church can be wrong about something like LGBT issues or contraception, then you do not believe in its infallibility.  That’s a HUGE part of Church doctrine.  This caused me a great deal of cognitive dissonance as a young man, and was instrumental in my movement towards atheism.  

On the other hand, I think it’s great that Catholics are trying to institute change within the Church.  But it just seems like they are putting on the display the lack of confidence they have in the Church’s moral authority.

 Where in this article did Hemant get any kind of math wrong? All he said was that SOME of the teachers balked at the idea, not all, and he didn’t give any kind of percentage in the entire article. Can you point out something he wrote that was illogical or mathematically incorrect and demonstrate what makes the statement illogical/mathematically incorrect?

Naturally some might think so, but actually, I think you will find historically various professions of faith, whether this one, or the Nicean or Apostle’s creeds tended to elicit much debate.  

Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant theologians have been debating points of faith and what they have meant for centuries.

What is remarkable is that  996 out of 1000 signed the Profession of faith. 99.6 % of any population agreeing on something is noteworthy. As far as the 4  that have the problem accepting the teachings of the Catholic Church I am glad they are not teaching youth their personal beliefs and trying to pass them off as objective truths.

But These people are not really causing any of those changes we want. Are they?

If the majority of the Catholic Church was not part of the Catholic Church, then we would not need the Catholic church to change over time.

“Objective truth.” I do not think it means what you think it means.

Short answer – yes.

Long answer – All of the beliefs the Catholic Church now professes were implicit in the faith from the foundation of the Church on Pentecost. However, that which is implicit must often be made explicit because frankly, we’re human and compared to God, we’re pretty stupid. I include myself in that too.

So thus, that which was implicitly within the faith would be questioned. For example, the Gnostics questioned and denied the humanity of Jesus, while the Arians questioned and denied the divinity of Christ. The Donatists denied the love of God in Reconciliation, and the Albigensians denied the oneness of God. Seriously, every objection you can think of to the Faith has a heresy, already named and beaten long ago, which forced the Church to have a look in the Gift of the Faith and see and reveal that which was already contained within.

You may disagree with what was taught, but it was there from the start. We just waited for the doubts before we wrote the dogmatic dictionary.

OK, two things – first, the priests being married. That’s a practice, not a dogma. Don’t conflate the two. Dogmatically, the Church is unchanged. In practice? Sure – Latin Mass and Vernacular Mass. But practice is not the core of the faith – that’s the dogma, and the dogma is unchanged. Priestly celibacy is a practice, and could be changed if the Church so willed (but she doesn’t, because priests are expected to be the first to die when the martyr’s call comes, being as they are good shepherds imitating The Good Shepherd).

Second, abortion has always been considered a sin against the Fifth Commandment. The Fifth Commandment specifically forbids murder, but under it falls all sins of aggression towards the person of another. Common assault is a sin against the Fifth Commandment. Wishing evil upon another is  likewise offensive to the Fifth. These sins are not murder, yes, but left unchecked they lead to it.

Abortion itself is a specific kind of murder, defined in terms of its victim, the unborn. One can analogise to infanticide, fratricide, patricide and other such terms that are also descriptive of the victim.

Climacus made a simple mistake of qualification. It is no less true however to state that the Church’s dogmatic teaching has been constant over the years.

And I see your point on abortion – it was never considered permissible, but due to unanswered questions on “ensoulment”, it was not equated to murder (Aquinas lists it as a sin against marriage and the 6th Commandment). Thank you for bringing that to my attention. ^_^

People really are misunderstanding the numbers here.  There were five in the story, but MANY more who are resigning over the oath, probably more than half of all the catechists at this one church.  That’s a lot.

 No they will not be excommunicated but they will be prevented from teaching their false Gospel as Catholic Doctrine.

Who cares what you “think” when you post such trite?

On second thought I agree, it doesn’t seem to have much to do with having faith in their teachers, but forcing teachers to leave if they don’t fully comply with church teachings.  They figure they can count on those who sign annually.  I wonder how many teachers sign it and still insert their own bias in their classes.