Again and again in my writing, I have rediscovered the same motif in different variations: if we value truth above all else, we cannot remain shackled to the literal propositions of natural language. This is because God, who is the Truth, did not reveal himself in logical syllogisms but in divine parables. As I have argued before, this has serious implications for physics, information technology, and theology. But it has only recently dawned on me that it may also have significant consequences for certain edge cases of Church teaching that many find difficult to accept.
I am talking about those situations where you come to Church authority as someone who delights in the Gospel, in the word of God, and leave feeling scalded by the sharp deductions of official logic, which rebuke you and condemn what you do. I believe that what often crushes you so completely is not the verdict itself, but the disconnect you sense between reality and the syllogisms you are presented with. This leads many to turn against Church teaching in defiance, or at the very least to live in private what they would not openly admit in public, without any sense that they are sinning.
I think that, in truth, this has nothing to do with what the Church teaches. The Church can only teach what has been revealed and confirmed to it by the Lord Jesus, and he did not speak in syllogisms. I believe that if the Lord Jesus himself appeared and told a parable pointing to the same conclusion as that sharp official deduction, many would take his words to heart and repent, or at least see the truth as it really is. It is the utter misunderstanding caused by the inability to match the words to the reality that causes the rift, and a rift can harden into schism.
Consider the following nonsensical yet sharp deduction: all Catholic Christians should stay out of hospitals, because more people die there than anywhere else. Hospitals are where doctors tamper with the gift of life, which they did not give and therefore have no right to take. They are also places where patients are coerced into acting as if losing this earthly life were the ultimate disaster and there were no life to come. So not only do they risk losing their lives, they also put their very salvation in danger. Going to hospital is therefore gravely sinful.
I think we can all breathe a sigh of relief that this is not how the Church officially interprets things. It may sound odd, but we should acknowledge that there is a lot of truth in the argument above, and that a similar approach from Church authority would not be without precedent. To name one such instance: in the nineteenth century, the Church prohibited cremation on similar grounds. Because it was promoted largely by Freemasons, freethinkers, and anticlerical movements, cremation was seen as an open statement against belief in the afterlife, and thus against the Church. This is why it was banned for everyone. Now just replace Freemasons with doctors and cremation with risky medical procedures, and you have essentially the same situation, or at least a very similar one.
The ban on cremation was later relaxed, once society had forgotten its anti-religious connotations, yet scattering ashes remains prohibited for related reasons to this day. Not every practicing Catholic knows about these rules, and a scathing reproof from Church authority, with its sharp anti-nihilist and anti-pantheist fervor, can strike such people just after they have lost a loved one. Imagine such a person receiving a call from the parish office about this very matter, at that very moment. A biological machine would simply process the reasoning behind the rules and move on, but a living person endowed with emotions may instead sink to the kitchen floor, breathing hard, too stunned to speak. Words swirl in their head, but none of them seem to fit the reality they are living through. It feels like being slapped across the face by a parent at the very moment you need them to hold your hand.
I have experienced such ruthless treatment from the institutional Church many times myself. As a convert, I did not know or understand many things, and since catechesis was never truly a priority where I live, I had to learn the hard way the rules everyone assumes everyone knows. These experiences did not tear me away from the body of Christ, but only because I had set no expectations in the first place, of cruelty or, more precisely, of mercy.
But I happen to know several cradle Catholics who became completely estranged from their parish family after similar experiences, at a time when they were hoping for a helping hand. Sadder still, all they had done was something slightly unusual or unexpected, like scattering ashes without knowing anything about nineteenth-century freethinkers. It was not they who were working against Church teaching; it was misguided words, frozen into an official formula, that were working against them. All of this stemmed solely from the habit of staying within the world of words and logic, of official formulas that no longer convey the Holy Spirit.
As I have described in several other articles, in the coming age of language models all of society is about to receive a heavy dose of the same medicine. Perhaps it will finally cure us. The suffering may well be worth it, for it is no small thing when a distortion tears the body of Christ apart.
Today, I accept the Church’s teaching in its entirety. There were things I disagreed with in the past, but my life experience has always, in the end, shown me that the Church was right. I believe I will be able to explain its teaching to my kids as well, so that they never find themselves in conflict with it. Yet I still cannot quite make peace with many frozen official formulas. Some of them resemble my earlier argument about hospitals, or the rule on scattering ashes: true in a sense, yet badly misguided.
In science, it is the results, not the quality of the reasoning, that are put to the test; in matters of faith, it is the exact opposite. In faith, we know the conclusions are true, yet when the reasoning behind them is poor, it cannot withstand the test of experience, and faith gives way with it, as we can see happening across the Western world today.
I therefore believe that we, or rather the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, should put every official Church statement to a simple test. It would always begin with the same scene: “A young man came to the Lord Jesus and asked him, ‘Teacher, should we believe that [official Church statement]?’” The task is then to come up with at least one plausible answer the Lord Jesus might give that would not sound like outright sacrilege.
Let me demonstrate with the hospital example. Here, even someone without any authority, like me, can try it, since the Church holds no such official position.
“A young man approached the Lord and said, ‘Son of David, are we truly meant to avoid hospitals at all costs, lest we put our eternal life at risk, as the authorities teach?’ Jesus looked at him and said, ‘Is it better for doctors, good and bad alike, to be scattered across the land doing what they do, or for them all to work in one place? In which case are the sick more likely to be healed?’”
I realize that putting words into the mouth of the Lord Jesus is not something to be taken lightly. It would be enough if the authorities did the testing in private and simply told us which official statements survived and which should henceforth be considered void.
I cannot imagine the rule about scattering ashes surviving, and I suspect quite a few others would fall as well. I am not a moral theologian, still less a culture warrior, so I will not speculate about the ones you may be thinking of.
I trust the authorities to do their job.