Chasing People Out of the Church

Let me put forth a hypothetical case:

Let’s say there is a popular Catholic writer who’s also a bank robber. In many respects, the writer’s articles are orthodox and respectful of the Church leadership. However, whenever it comes to various forms of larceny, the writer insists that the Church’s teachings are mistaken. He argues for a relaxation of Church teaching on grounds that (to him) are solid and irrefutable, even dragging out the corpse of poor old Galileo to say “the Church has been wrong before, y’know.” He draws a considerable following (at least, considerable for the Catholic blogosphere) from other thieves and from those sympathetic to theft, but also a lot of critical apologists who insist—often, quite nastily—that the commandment against stealing must be upheld.

Eventually, the writer responds to some crisis by leaving the Church—it’s too full of dunderheads who are too stupid to ever change. Is it proper for other writers to celebrate the writer’s defection?

It should be obvious that the answer is No. The job of the apologist is to explain, defend, and promote the teachings of the Catholic Church. It is not to chase heretics out of the Church, or even to label the erring as heretics. If anything, the writer’s apostasy represents not the apologists’ success but rather their failure.

Grant that for well over a century there have been many Great Thinkers both inside and outside the faith who have loudly insisted that the Church must “get with the times,” that we must change what we believe and teach to reflect the Western world’s insanity if we don’t wish Christianity to die of irrelevancy. Grant as well that among them are those who argue that the Church must, as part of this new relevancy, re-categorize various sins as good things (or at least morally neutral) and accept certain falsehoods as truths. Grant also that blogging has become the preeminent way for such well-meaning folk to climb on their soapboxes and get public applause for propounding their favorite errors.

Of course, it isn’t the Church’s job to give the current cultural milieu her stamp of approval or to endorse every intellectual fad Western academics adopt. Her primary job is to “proclaim the message ... whether the time is favorable or unfavorable” (2 Timothy 4:2); as a first-order consequence, that job entails preserving the message from corruption. This necessarily means that some people’s preferred theories of economic or sexual or political justice are going to go begging. So far as the Church is in need of reform, it has to reform in order to be truer to her message, not to conform to “the spirit of the age.” (There are spirits other than the Holy Spirit, y’know.)

But let’s take for argument’s sake the strictest construction possible of extra Ecclesiam nulla salus (outside the Church there is no salvation): to be saved, you must be a practical Catholic in communion with the Holy See. “Whosoever ..., knowing that the Catholic Church was made necessary by Christ, would refuse to enter or to remain in it, [can] not be saved” (Lumen Gentium 14; vide Catechism of the Catholic Church 846-8). Heaven ain’t Burger King^®—you get it God’s way or you don’t get it at all.

But God does not desire people to be condemned to Hell, but rather to come to repentance and so to union with Him (CCC 1037; cf. 2 Peter 3:9). That’s the point of the evangelical mandate (Matthew 28:19-20). So the job of the apologist is not merely to correct the error of the dissenter but to do it in such a fashion that the dissenter learns to “think with the Church,” not as a sheep but as an intelligent person freely coming to agreement. Grant again, not many of us are gifted with the power of persuasion; yet that is what we’re called to do—persuade.

Of course, there are people who are so vested in their error that not even the most lucid and charitable apologist can convince them to abandon it; only some personal cataclysm will breach the walls of their epistemic fortress. Here some pundits wonder why bishops are so reluctant to excommunicate the most notorious offenders, and at times I’ve been one of them. Again, though, the purpose of excommunication is not to kick the dissenter out of the Church but rather to bring them to recognize the seriousness of their error. The goal is still to get the dissenter into Heaven, not to cast them into Hell. And the authority to excommunicate lies with the bishops, not with apologists.

So, if we take the strictest definition of “no salvation outside the Church,” such that not even a good Eastern Orthodox person could find hope of Heaven, then to wish that P would leave the Catholic Church is to wish for P’s eternal damnation—an atrocious and reprehensible sentiment. Even in the post-Vatican II Church’s more tolerant and ecumenical understanding of extra Ecclesiam nulla salus, to wish a dissenter would leave the Church is still churlish and pharisaical: “Who cares about the peril of their soul, so long as we don’t have to put up with their crud anymore?” Either way, it’s a sin against charity.

To gloat about their defection on Twitter or Facebook? Sinful and asinine. Other people actually read our stuff; what do you think a non-Christian’s impression is of Christians shooting their wounded? Sometimes we Catholics are the strongest argument against Catholicism.

As the parable of the Weeds among the Wheat (Matthew 13:24-30) tells us, Christ doesn’t expect us to remove the “weeds” from among the “wheat” of the Church; that he will do at the Judgment of the Nations (Matthew 25:31-46). Our main task is to ensure that we ourselves are ranked with the wheat, to punish and enslave our own bodies so we won’t lose the race (cf. 1 Corinthians 9:24-27). It isn’t our job, as Catholics or as apologists, to “purify the Church” except through our own individual commitments to live the teachings of the Church in spirit and truth.

Yes, this really did happen. A Catholic writer left the faith and other writers who pride themselves on their fidelity to the Magisterium cheered to see that writer go. It takes a special kind of obliviousness to celebrate a loss to us all.