It’s no secret that I think that Vatican 1 was a colossal mistake that’s sucked up more spiritual oxygen than it’s worth in its rather brief history. Ex Cathedra has about as much to do with the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus as the proclamation of Charles III as king certifies the divine right of the British monarchy to rule the fate of nations. Zero, except for his bank account. What we are witnessing now is the slow, painful demise of a spiritual monarchy and the upset of curial hangers-on and courtiers who have been sucking the papal tit for money and power for a century and a half. It’s not pretty but it’s entirely predictable. The rub is that this proclamation can’t be wrong no matter how wrong it is, or the whole house of cards comes crashing down.
It was a California Jesuit, perhaps John Loubonis or Gene Bianchi, who retorted to one of my historical analyses: “remember the logical fallacy ‘post hoc, propter hoc.’” My worthy opponent was defending arguments in favor of the truth of the doctrine of papal infallibility. The fact that Pius IX surrendered the Palazzo del Quirinale to Victor Emmanuel when he lost the Papal States, his army of 15,000, his rights, privileges and income as one of the kings of what we now know as the the Republic of Italy of course has nothing to do with shoring up his spiritual authority at a time when he lost everything else on which he imagined that authority rested. Of course not. It was just a quirk of fate or a pure coincidence that allowed him to reassert a doctrine lurking in the shadows until a political upheaval allowed the truth to reveal itself.
In the cult of objective spiritual truth, it is vital to dissociate the muck of historical circumstance from the hard work of doing logical analysis. Post hoc ergo propter hoc* is what is known as “informal fallacy.” It refers to assumptions embedded in ordinary language. “I saw Johnny on the street just after the bus left the station” does not necessarily imply that Johnny took the bus from Bakersfield. If I needed to demonstrate that Johnny took the bus, of course I could just ask Johnny to show me his bus ticket, or search his pants pockets for the incriminating evidence, but then there is still the possibility that he might have picked up a ticket from a real passenger who’d dropped it on the sidewalk or had boarded the bus in Oakland and disembarked on 6th Street. Nothing is certain. But I am certain that the Roman church is pulling a fast one. They’re not showing the ticket from Bakersfield.
After all this you might think that I am actually interested in the pope’s infallible words. I'm not. I was curious that Benedict, recently of happy memory, said he was no oracle, but he could be given the proper conditions. Even John 23 said something to the effect that “I am infallible but you’re not going to hear it from me.” So these guys hold the authority of the oracle in their back pocket just in case. Meanwhile it has caused immense disruption and controversy across doctrinal Christianity. This interests me. The church is standing in its own way.
Why and how? I think that the “why” is self-evident. The “how” might require some digging, but let’s dig.
Avery Dulles became very conservative in his later years. I asked him why he supported this kind of centralized authority, and he said that his argument rested on the Ignatian principle of “Thinking with the Church.” I should have countered “even if that thinking is wrong?” But I didn’t. I was intimidated by the obligations of friendship and his red hat, but after John Paul 2 strongly reiterated the centralized power of papal authority, any further discussion was over as far as Avery was concerned.
This was not always the case. During a symposium about the Jesuits’ connection and promise to hitch their horses to the papal cart, a strategy that proved immensely successful, I asked a simple question: why? Avery said that despite everything, any problems or contradictions, we obeyed because of “filial piety.” That was enough. I then asked how we could support something or someone on a premise that was actually different from his understanding: how could we justify believing one thing when the person-in-question actually said something different about themselves? He reiterated his statement about filial piety, but later privately said, “I really didn’t answer your question did I?” He did not, and I cannot accept a pious notion of piety to guide us. Today I would phrase my question differently, “Why do people believe nonsense?” Usually because of laziness, or fear, or tradition, none of which are good reasons.
I am quite sure that we will never hear any infallible words from Francis. The question is whether or not the absurd travestry of papal monarchy will simply die off without being addressed directly. The opposition is gathering its forces to nullify any work by the upcoming synod.
*Post hoc ergo propter hoc (Latin: 'after this, therefore because of this') is an informal fallacy that states: "Since event Y followed event X, event Y must have been caused by event X." It is often shortened simply to post hoc fallacy. A logical fallacy of the questionable cause variety, it is subtly different from the fallacy cum hoc ergo propter hoc ('with this, therefore because of this'), in which two events occur simultaneously or the chronological ordering is insignificant or unknown. Post hoc is a logical fallacy in which one event seems to be the cause of a later event because it occurred earlier. [1]
Post hoc is a particularly tempting error because correlation sometimes appears to suggest causality. The fallacy lies in a conclusion based solely on the order of events, rather than taking into account other factors potentially responsible for the result that might rule out the connection.[2]
A simple example is "the rooster crows immediately before sunrise; therefore the rooster causes the sun to rise."[3]
