Steve Skojec, Cafeteria Catholic

ary Pez­zu­lo asks, “Who is Steve Sko­jec, any­way?” Here’s my answer: Apart from being a Rad­Trad blog­ger and pope bash­er at One Luther Five (he calls it One Peter Five, which is his right, I guess), he is a cafe­te­ria Catholic.

I have, from a dis­tance, been observ­ing the Twit­ter war, of sev­er­al days’ dura­tion, between Mr. Sko­jec and my Face­book friend Mary Ham­mond; and I say, I was not going to get in the mid­dle of it, because he was mak­ing enough of an ass of him­self on his own. Except that part of it touched upon one of my top­ics this month, and I could not resist say­ing a few words—not on Twit­ter but here. At one point, the dis­cus­sion between the two (I speak loose­ly in call­ing it that) turned toward Islam. And here, dear read­er, for your review:

Sko­jec [here]: I’d class the cur­rent def­i­n­i­tions of Islam drawn from Nos­tra Ætate and Lumen Gen­tium as “dan­ger­ous wish­ful think­ing.

 

Sko­jec: [here]: The Cat­e­chism isn’t infal­li­ble on this top­ic. Can’t be, inas­much as the Church has no author­i­ty to define anoth­er reli­gion.

 

[Sko­jec’s tweets have since been coura­geous­ly deleted—SEA, 4/28/24.]

Now, one part of this is true: What is in the Cat­e­chism is of vary­ing degrees of author­i­ty. The mere inclu­sion of some­thing in the Cat­e­chism does not con­fer upon it a high­er lev­el of author­i­ty than it had to begin with. Car­di­nal Ratzinger said it him­self: “The indi­vid­ual doc­trines that the Cat­e­chism affirms has no oth­er author­i­ty than that which they already pos­sess.” So if it was not infal­li­ble before, it is not now.

That said, the USCCB explains the author­i­ty the Cat­e­chism has:

• It is “part of the Church’s offi­cial teach­ing”;
• It belongs to the ordi­nary Mag­is­teri­um;
• Pope St. John Paul II pro­mul­gat­ed it as an offi­cial doc­u­ment in his apos­tolic con­sti­tu­tion Fidei Deposi­tum;
• The pope described it as a state­ment of “Catholic doc­trine” and a “sure norm for teach­ing the faith”

Now, Mr. Sko­jec of One Luther Five would like to use the claim that the Cat­e­chis­m’s words about Islam are “not infal­li­ble” as an excuse for reject­ing them. This he may not do, and he may not do so for the rea­sons I gave back on March 4. Vat­i­can II, the Pro­fes­sion of Faith, and Canon Law all claim that the faith­ful owe assent to what­ev­er the Mag­is­teri­um teach­es, whether infal­li­ble or not. Again, Canon 752 says:

Although not an assent of faith, a reli­gious sub­mis­sion of the intel­lect and will must be giv­en to a doc­trine which the Supreme Pon­tiff or the col­lege of bish­ops declares con­cern­ing faith or morals when they exer­cise the authen­tic mag­is­teri­um, even if they do not intend to pro­claim it by defin­i­tive act; there­fore, the Chris­t­ian faith­ful are to take care to avoid those things which do not agree with it.

“Avoid those things which do not agree with it.” That means Mr. Sko­jec (Canon Law says) needs to refrain from describ­ing the Church’s state­ments on Islam as “dan­ger­ous wish­ful think­ing.”

But there is a sec­ond, and more impor­tant, point to be made here. If it is true that a state­ment in the Cat­e­chism retains its orig­i­nal lev­el of author­i­ty, it is worth not­ing that what says about Islam comes from a Church council—Vatican II. As Mr. Sko­jec him­self says, they come from Nos­tra Aetate and Lumen Gen­tium. (A side note: I’ve writ­ten about this top­ic before, here.)

Now, the high­est lev­el of author­i­ty in Church teach­ing is when the pope speaks ex cathe­dra and pro­nounces a solemn def­i­n­i­tion. The author­i­ty of a Church Coun­cil is sec­ond only to that. (The four lev­els of Church teach­ing are described here.)

So what Mr. Sko­jec is say­ing is that, unless it is a solemn def­i­n­i­tion, he can reject what­ev­er he likes in Church teach­ing, even if it comes from a coun­cil. Of course, if that’s the stan­dard, one could reject almost any­thing at all in Church teach­ing. One could reject what the Church teach­es about abor­tion. One could reject Humanae Vitae. Or one could reject the Cat­e­chis­m’s state­ments about homo­sex­u­al­i­ty being “intrin­si­cal­ly dis­or­dered.” No pope has made any solemn def­i­n­i­tions regard­ing these. In fact, a great deal of what Mr. Sko­jec insists upon as the “tra­di­tion­al” faith falls short of a solemn def­i­n­i­tion.

Catholics don’t have the lib­er­ty to say, “I am only going to accept the high­est lev­el of author­i­ty, and reject what­ev­er I choose in the rest.” There’s a name for that: Cafe­te­ria Catholi­cism.