The Facts of Life Series: Orthodoxy
The truth of the Catholic faith isn’t true because it’s Catholic. It is true because it is true and that’s why it is Catholic. This should be obvious, a clearly reasoned commonsensical conclusion about the nature of truth and the role of the Catholic Church in investigating, identifying and including truths within the breadth and depth of its orthodoxy. But commonsense is no longer so common, nor does the sense it makes imply anything more than an opinion, a personal perception nowadays.
For the very idea and essence of Catholic orthodoxy is two-fold. Explicitly, orthodoxy is “right thinking,” thinking in accord with Catholic teaching. And, implicitly Catholic orthodoxy is actual and factual truth about life and daily living. Truth in the old-fashioned sense. Truth on a par with gravity and breathing or death and taxes. Truth as a logical fact and a rational necessity.
But, such a presumption of and an insistence on orthodoxy as truth runs counter to our modern world’s implicit assumptions about the nature of truth and any truth’s specific content. Now, what truth there is, is limited to a small set of scientific laws about the physical world. All else is simply the domain of personal perception and preference or cultural consensus and legal and social norms.
That is why morality is no longer subject to rational proof and philosophical justification, but is simply the province of personal preference. This change has led to the replacement of truth and virtue as the fundamental moral imperatives. Now, philosophical relativism and its inevitable virtues of tolerance and acceptance dominate our discourse and our daily lives. And, all this is a direct product of foundational philosophical errors arising from faulty and flawed ideas about the very nature of the cosmos and human nature and about how and what we can know.
The influences of these erroneous ideas have even penetrated the Church and colored how we think about our Catholic orthodoxy. Just think about the common parlance and the analytic frame that has come to dominate our discussions and disagreements within the Church. Over the last few decades, we often evaluate Catholic opinions and practices along a continuum of “liberal” and “conservative,” and we call those closer to the middle of these two poles “moderates.”
But, this is a political analytic paradigm, a paradigm that fails to recognize the truth of Catholic orthodoxy. This political analytic paradigm omits the very idea of truth and positions everything on a sliding scale of preference, whose implicit point of reference assumes the absence of right answers and orthodox truths. Now, you are not wrong. You are just too conservative, or even too liberal. And, there is a simple way to illustrate this change. Think of how long the Communion lines are and how short the confession lines are. That observable fact raises questions about the waning influence of true orthodoxy.
Yet, the real, rational Catholic paradigm should and does look very different. For it incorporates truth within its analytic frame. On one end of this scale, this continuum, is orthodoxy, which is the truth of our Catholic worldview. And, at the other end is heresy, ideas which are contrary to doctrinal truths. This truth-based paradigm outlines degrees of deviance from Catholic truth. It is a scale that recognizes the degree or extent of error on any given issue of orthodoxy and labels such deviance as error, sin or even heresy, if it deviates far enough or deliberately enough.
And, this orthodoxy — heresy scale applies to many issues and ideas beyond morality. For example, to assert the idea that all we can know about truth is confined to the sciences is a heretical philosophical premise, as well as a self-refuting contradiction in logic. That idea is a common cultural assumption too, as outlined above. But, it is wrong. And therefore, it is implicitly heretical.
For the Church asserts the necessity for reason in the scientific method and in many other areas of inquiry and practicality, as well. Not only does this cultural assumption about knowledge deny reason’s primacy, but it also precludes any form of revelation, most particularly and prominently the revelation of Jesus Christ, the Incarnation.
That is why our priests study philosophy and theology in the seminaries. For reason and revelation are our two methods for knowing about God and for knowing Him personally. And, the Church has done this since its beginning. Its orthodoxy is the product of its authority, its reasoned traditions and its received revelations. And, there is a continuity of orthodoxy across its history.
The Church also recognizes the fatal contradiction in this assertion that truth can only be determined empirically. Such a belief about knowing and knowledge is self-refuting. For if our mind is merely neural activity, then reason is irretrievably reduced to its cortical activity alone. And, reason ceases to exist. And, science is no longer possible. For science relies on reason from its inception to its application.
On the other hand, the Church’s orthodoxy is not only certain, but honestly and humbly so. For the orthodoxy of the Church recognizes a “hierarchy of truths” of declining certainty in three broad categories: dogmas, doctrines and disciplines. The full orthodoxy of the Church sees some degree of ambiguity and complexity that allows for these distinctions.
And, it has done so across its history. Just look at big theological questions such as the Trinity and the dual nature of the Incarnation or the establishment of the canonical books of the Bible. The Church moved slowly and deliberately as it clarified and developed these crucial dogmas, discussing and debating them, until the decision was sound, sophisticated, certain.
Or, look at the practical moral subject of usury, lending money at interest, and how the Church modified its position. The Church, in light of economic growth and the need for investment capital, recognized that lending money was a legitimate moral option provided the interest rates were just and fair and tied to market conditions. Yet, their view was sufficiently nuanced to preclude usurious rates, while continuing its support for charitable monetary assistance for those in need.
This is why the church’s orthodoxy clearly and directly states its dogmas, its doctrines and its disciplines with the degree of authority inherent within their broad classification system. For it teaches its orthodoxy in the manner appropriate to its certainty. A simple example is evident in the Church’s distinction between mortal and venial sins. The orthodoxy of mortal sin requires three conditions, which must be present. First, mortal sin must involve a sin of a grave matter, a sin of a deeply evil nature. It also requires the sinner to be fully knowledgeable of the grave nature of such sin. And, a mortal sin must be done as a directly willful decision on the part of the individual person.
Notice the clarity of its orthodoxy here. Notice too how these defining characteristics are implicitly reasonable and explicitly reasoned. Notice the implicit sophistication of this orthodoxy; how the nuances of human understanding and intentionality are defining factors of judging a sin as mortal. For a simple insistence on the nature of a sin’s serious nature is not really enough to be categorized as a mortal sin, a sin which severs the individual’s relationship with God.
God’s relational reality with us would require a fully knowledgeable and deliberate act of the will to truly be an act that directly and inherently severs relational ties with Him. For a mortal sin is a deliberate and direct rejection of God and His teaching by the sinning individual. Yet, it is also a part of the Church’s orthodoxy to make room for repentance and contrition through the sacrament of reconciliation, the orthodox means to restore the relational bond with God after a deliberate rejection of Him and His commandments.
Such orthodoxy is clarity and consistency that is reasonable and just. It is a harmonious blending of truth and love, goodness and forgiveness. It is the love of truth and the truth of love. For the fundamental assertion of “orthodoxy” is its insistence on the actual truth of the tenets of the Catholic religion. And, these are common truths and distinctive truths. For the Catholic faith may share some common truths with other faiths, particularly Christian churches.
But, the fullness of its many truths must include its distinctive truths too. When it comes to truth, the distinctive orthodoxies of the Church are crucial. For these differences make all the difference when it comes the truth of our Catholic orthodoxy. For our distinctive orthodoxy is precisely where we assert the truth, crucial truths others reject or ignore, crucial truth others vilify or deny.
For our distinctive orthodoxy is precisely what makes us Catholic. And, it is to these distinctives we should renew our interest and resurrect our resolve. And, we should regularly encourage and share these distinctives with our fellow Catholics and any others who seek our counsel, or who are curious about our faith and our moral perspectives.
For it is part of the orthodoxy of the faith to both learn and to teach its truths and to share and to embody them. For we are most fully the salt and the light of the world, when we are most fully following our Catholic orthodoxy in word and in deed. And, it is then that we draw most near to Our Father and become more fully His true sons and daughters.
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This article is the eleventh part in an extended series on the “The Facts of Life” by F. X. Cronin. You can start with part one by clicking here and see previous entries by clicking here.
We also recommend Mr. Cronin’s latest book, The World According to God: The Whole Truth About Life and Living. It is available from your favorite bookstore and through Sophia Institute Press.
Photo by Alana Harris on Unsplash
