Did I say the papacy is useless? and other comedy from Steve Hays.

o. A year or so back, my stalk­er James “Sea Lion” Rus­sell start­ed to call me a “homophile.” You may remem­ber this; I did­n’t think the sex­u­al abuse scan­dal should be blamed on The Gays. Then, the very next week, some­one on Face­book called me a “homo­phobe” because I’m against same-sex mar­riage. It was a remark­able trans­for­ma­tion. But here’s anoth­er exam­ple of the same thing. Fre­quent­ly some­one who hates Pope Fran­cis will call me a “papalo­la­tor,” or a “papal pos­i­tivist,” or an “Ultra­mon­tanist,” or what­ev­er the slur of the week is. Sup­pos­ed­ly I think every­thing a pope says is infal­li­ble, or I think every­thing this pope says is infal­li­ble. And now this week, a Protes­tant apol­o­gist has decid­ed that I think the papa­cy is “use­less.” How wild­ly does Alt change with every new wind that blows!

Said apol­o­gist is known on this blog as Steve “Pur­ple” Hays. We’ve dueled before. Once upon a time, he imag­ined that I was try­ing to pro­mote him to a bish­oprick with that nick­name, “since pur­ple is the col­or of epis­co­pal vest­ments.” That was fun­ny.

Mr. Hays blogs at Fail­ablogue, though he calls it Tri­ablogue for opti­mistic rea­sons that were once known to him alone, but which he has now revealed to us: Some­one named Ryan McReynolds came up with it. A like­ly sto­ry. Frankly, the name sounds made up. Maybe Mr. Hays him­self is also a fic­tion­al char­ac­ter and the posts over there are writ­ten by a com­put­er pre-pro­grammed for Calvin­ism. Who knows? But I digress.

Mr. Hays was attempt­ing, in his weak and mud­dled way, to respond to this post from August 10; and most of his response is (to my immea­sur­able exul­ta­tion) ignor­able. But I do want to spend a few moments lin­ger­ing over this “Alt thinks the papa­cy is use­less” claim. In 2015, Mr. Hays called me a “papal lack­ey.” But in 2019 I’m sup­posed to be in despair over the use­less­ness of the papa­cy. I mar­vel. Here is what I wrote that gave Mr. Hays this errant notion about my views:

[I]t’s a car­i­ca­ture to say that the pope plays ref­er­ee all the time between war­ring Catholics. Not in my expe­ri­ence. First of all, Catholics don’t have that kind of hot­line to the Vat­i­can. Half the time, we can’t even get the local bish­op to pay us any mind. Sec­ond, too many Catholics these days are full of pride and hiss like fer­al cats at any­thing the pope says. Pope Fran­cis Derange­ment Syn­drome is a real prob­lem. But Catholics don’t send the pope an email every time Boo­dle and Coo­dle get in an argu­ment about Luke 22:36 and the sec­ond amend­ment. The pope’s role as teacher of the whole Church is more about pre­serv­ing the uni­ty of the faith than answer­ing every ques­tion that comes up.

“So!” cried Mr. Hays. (Okay, he did­n’t cry “so!”; I added that for effect.) “I appre­ci­ate Alt’s frank admis­sion regard­ing the gen­er­al use­less­ness of a liv­ing teach­ing office. I wish him suc­cess in per­suad­ing his fel­low Catholics to share his dim view regard­ing the gen­er­al use­less­ness of a liv­ing teach­ing office.”

Now, one can only get from what I wrote to what Mr. Hays con­cludes if you assume at least one of two things:

• Unless the pope can answer every ques­tion that occurs to the mind of man, the papa­cy is use­less;
• Pre­serv­ing the uni­ty of the faith is use­less

If Mr. Hays assumes the for­mer of the two, then appar­ent­ly he thinks the Bible is use­less. (And this from some­one who claims he accepts sola scrip­tura!) The Bible does­n’t answer every ques­tion that occurs to the mind of man. It’s not (I’m steal­ing from Mark Shea here, but he won’t mind since he’s stolen expres­sions from me too) the Big Book of Every­thing. There are many reli­gious argu­ments, or argu­ments that we make reli­gious, that the Bible does­n’t answer for us.

Nor can the pope inter­vene every time two Catholics get into a dis­pute with each oth­er. The pope does­n’t tell us how many jel­ly beans are in the jar or the exact num­ber of hydro­gen atoms in the Tiber Riv­er or how many demons can dance on Mr. Hays’ left fin­ger­nail. And only a nut like Tay­lor Mar­shall thinks he knows what advice those demons have to offer.

But if Mr. Hays assumes the lat­ter of the two, then he must think that 1 Cor. 1:10 is a use­less text. The pope’s role, as teacher of the Church, is to ful­fill the man­date of 1 Cor. 1:10. But St. Paul did not mean that Chris­tians should be “of one mind and judg­ment” about every ques­tion that comes up. Rather, he meant those words to apply only to those things that are nec­es­sary to the faith. That’s what the pope’s teach­ing office is for.

I cer­tain­ly don’t think that pre­serv­ing Catholic uni­ty in what’s nec­es­sary to the faith is use­less. Per­haps Mr. Hays does, but he should­n’t read his own morose papal nihilism into what I say.