Dissenting from the Magisterium causes great spiritual harm.

n Don­um Ver­i­tatis, the CDF lists sev­er­al forms dis­sent against the Mag­is­teri­um might take. (This is the fourth post in an ongo­ing dis­cus­sion. The first is here; the sec­ond, here; the third, here.) “Dis­sent,” the CDF clar­i­fies, is dif­fer­ent from “per­son­al dif­fi­cul­ties.” One must dis­tin­guish. You can work through a per­son­al dif­fi­cul­ty; but to dis­sent is to rebel. “Spir­i­tu­al harm” comes of dis­sent. There are five kinds.

First, Philo­soph­i­cal lib­er­al­ism. “Free­dom of thought,” the CDF says, “comes to oppose the author­i­ty of tra­di­tion which is con­sid­ered a cause of servi­tude.” Those who hold this idea think that feal­ty is slav­ery. To dis­sent is to be free.

A teach­ing hand­ed on and gen­er­al­ly received is a pri­ori sus­pect and its truth con­test­ed. Ulti­mate­ly, free­dom of judg­ment under­stood in this way is more impor­tant than the truth itself.

But true free­dom is the free­dom to seek the truth. It is not free­dom from the truth. To be free from truth is to be free from God.

Sec­ond, Manip­u­la­tion of pub­lic opin­ion. The mass media can exert a “pres­sure to con­form.” Its nar­ra­tives assume a “nor­ma­tive val­ue”; the world demands the Church con­form to those nar­ra­tives rather than to the truth.

The view is par­tic­u­lar­ly pro­mot­ed that the Church should only express her judg­ment on those issues which pub­lic opin­ion con­sid­ers impor­tant and then only by way of agree­ing with it. [Sounds famil­iar.] The Mag­is­teri­um, for exam­ple, could inter­vene in eco­nom­ic or social ques­tions but ought to leave mat­ters of con­ju­gal and fam­i­ly moral­i­ty to indi­vid­ual judg­ment.

Or, con­trari­wise, some say that the Church should stay out of eco­nom­ics and instead wor­ry about sav­ing souls. Judge Napoli­tano once lashed out at Pope Fran­cis on these grounds. The judge was upset with Evan­gelii Gaudi­um and Lauda­to Si, and was using his media plat­form to encour­age dis­sent from lib­er­tar­i­ans and con­ser­v­a­tives.

Those who sub­scribe to this form of dis­sent want to be affirmed rather than taught.

Third, Accep­tance of only infal­li­ble teach­ings. This is a big one. This is an argu­ment I encounter very fre­quent­ly, and it is what prompt­ed me to write my orig­i­nal post in this series.

More fre­quent­ly, it is assert­ed that the the­olo­gian is not bound to adhere to any Mag­is­te­r­i­al teach­ing unless it is infal­li­ble. Thus a kind of the­o­log­i­cal pos­i­tivism is adopt­ed, accord­ing to which, doc­trines pro­posed with­out exer­cise of the charism of infal­li­bil­i­ty are said to have no oblig­a­tory char­ac­ter about them, leav­ing the indi­vid­ual com­plete­ly at lib­er­ty to adhere to them or not.

This is the kind of dis­sent that most inter­ests me present­ly. (And make no mis­take: It is dis­sent, accord­ing to the CDF.) Those who make this claim might make it in a few dif­fer­ent ways.

• They might say that the Mag­is­te­r­i­al texts con­sti­tute a “debat­able the­ol­o­gy.”
• They might say there is no such thing as a “nor­ma­tive” the­ol­o­gy. A per­son can favor any which one he likes.

In all of this, the CDF is most wor­ried about a “par­al­lel mag­is­teri­um.” The­o­log­i­cal plu­ral­ism is only legit­i­mate to the extent that the uni­ty of the faith remains. Christ does tran­scend all cat­e­gories of thought. But “[t]his can­not mean that it is pos­si­ble to accept con­clu­sions con­trary to that mys­tery and it cer­tain­ly does not put into ques­tion the truth of those asser­tions by which the Mag­is­teri­um has declared itself.”

The Church has its author­i­ty to teach from God. (Matt. 16:18; John 16:13; 1 Tim. 3:15; John 21:15). Dis­sent from the Church can lead to “spir­i­tu­al harm,” accord­ing to the CDF, because it leads to “con­tempt for true author­i­ty.”

Indeed, when you dis­sent, you set your­self up as your own author­i­ty. You reject the Holy Spir­it, who guides the Church and not you or me.

Fourth, Argu­men­tum ad pop­u­lum. This is a false appeal to the sen­sus fidei. Accord­ing to the CDF, the sen­sus fidei is not just the opin­ions of the faith­ful.

The sense of the faith is a prop­er­ty of the­o­log­i­cal faith; and, as God’s gift which enables one to adhere per­son­al­ly to the Truth, it can­not err. This per­son­al faith is also the faith of the Church since God has giv­en guardian­ship of the Word to the Church. Con­se­quent­ly, what the believ­er believes is what the Church believes. The “sen­sus fidei” implies then by its nature a pro­found agree­ment of spir­it and heart with the Church, “sen­tire cum Eccle­sia”.

The sen­sus fidei, like con­science, must be formed by the Church’s teach­ing, not in dis­sent from it. A per­son can err; the Church can not.

Not all the ideas which cir­cu­late among the Peo­ple of God are com­pat­i­ble with the faith. This is all the more so giv­en that peo­ple can be swayed by a pub­lic opin­ion influ­enced by mod­ern com­mu­ni­ca­tions media. Not with­out rea­son did the Sec­ond Vat­i­can Coun­cil empha­size the indis­sol­u­ble bond between the “sen­sus fidei” and the guid­ance of God’s Peo­ple by the mag­is­teri­um of the Pas­tors. These two real­i­ties can­not be sep­a­rat­ed.

There is no free­dom, the CDF stress­es, apart from “uni­ty in truth” and “fideli­ty to the faith.” There is no free­dom in dis­sent.

The free­dom of the act of faith can­not jus­ti­fy a right to dis­sent. In fact this free­dom does not indi­cate at all free­dom with regard to the truth but sig­ni­fies the free self-deter­mi­na­tion of the per­son in con­for­mi­ty with his moral oblig­a­tion to accept the truth.

Dis­sent from the Mag­is­teri­um is spir­i­tu­al­ly harm­ful because it alien­ates a per­son from the truth. To be alien­at­ed from the truth is to be alien­at­ed from God, who has entrust­ed the truth to the Church. The Church, Paul writes to Tim­o­thy, is the “pil­lar and ground of truth.”

Dis­sent, the CDF says, “fails to rec­og­nize the nature and mis­sion of the Church which has received from the Lord the task to pro­claim the truth of sal­va­tion to all men.”

Fifth, the Mag­is­teri­um of Con­science. Not even con­science jus­ti­fies dis­sent. A con­science must be fol­lowed, but it must also be formed. “Con­science is not an inde­pen­dent and infal­li­ble fac­ul­ty.” (That’s impor­tant.) “It is an act of moral judge­ment regard­ing a respon­si­ble choice.”

Set­ting up a supreme mag­is­teri­um of con­science in oppo­si­tion to the mag­is­teri­um of the Church means adopt­ing a prin­ci­ple of free exam­i­na­tion incom­pat­i­ble with the econ­o­my of Rev­e­la­tion.

And to do that breaks one’s “bond with Christ.”

To suc­cumb to the temp­ta­tion of dis­sent, on the oth­er hand, is to allow the “leav­en of infi­deli­ty to the Holy Spir­it” to start to work.

Dis­sent is a “leav­en of infi­deli­ty” to God.