I received an email a few weeks ago asking that I lay out my views on the origin of social authority in the family as opposed to contract or consent. I am not sure if they are fully formed…. but here goes.

The basic difference between Catholic and Modern views on the origin of political authority lies in the gulf between realism and nominalism. The rejection of the reality of universals necessarily entails the rejection of the social nature of man. Man’s social nature therefore cannot be the basis of civil authority. Nevertheless, there are Catholic authorities (albeit Jesuits) who hold that even though the authority of the state comes from nature and so from God it is mediated through the people because, in the event that the state were dissolved by some cataclysm, social authority would revert to a pure democracy. This pure democracy would then function as a constitutional convention bestowing legitimacy on the form of government its constituents elect to impose upon themselves and their descendants. What is the alternative to this account?

The family is the alternative. Man’s social nature is most obviously displayed in his dependant condition at birth, his need for sustenance, protection, socialisation and education, the frame of the male and female bodies and the need of the latter for protection and sustenance from the former while she provides their offspring with sustenance, protection, socialisation and education. The end of man in the-most-excellent-reciprocal-willing-of-the-good-of-the-best-possible-other demands the exemplary friendship of the child’s parents in the indissoluble bond of matrimony. The family and not the individual is the fundamental unit of civil society. Indeed, only two factors obstruct the simple identity of the family with civil society: a) the impossibility of marriage within the family b) the supernatural end of man. Because human beings cannot marry their kin without escalating disastrous consequences the family cannot perpetuate itself without forming a wider society that transcends itself. St Thomas points out in the De Regno that because the actual end of man in this order of providence is supernatural the true King can only be He Who unites man to the Divine Nature in Beatitude – Jesus Christ. Thus all the Kings of the Christian People must be subject to Christ’s Vicar, the Roman Pontiff, as to Himself.

How does this logic impact upon the question of the state of society at its actual beginning in time and in some hypothetical moment of destruction and re-constitution? Revelation has some very interesting light to shed upon these questions. It is clear from Genesis that the effects of the Fall have a progressive element. With each successive generation between the Fall and the Flood the life span of the antediluvian patriarchs diminished. According to Augustine’s interpretation our first parents possessed complete control of all their bodily functions. On this principle it ought to have been possible for them to beget pairs of children who, through a judicious distribution of chromosomes, were scarcely related to each other at all. If, as Genesis seems to imply, the loss of the praeternatural gifts was in some sense progressive then the key natural factor which prevents the family from being an unqualifiedly perfect society is removed. What of the supernatural factor? This too is resolved by revelation. For originally Adam would have transmitted sanctifying grace by generation to all of his descendants so this Adamic familial commonwealth would have truly fulfilled St Thomas’s requirements to qualify as a perfect community.

The Fall, of course, dramatically alters this but it does not abolish it altogether. Adam was still the recipient of revelation capable of conveying saving truth. The distinction between the family and the state was established by the Fall but (if we are right about the delayed removal of the praeternatural gifts) it was not yet applied. Likewise, the fact that the perfect exercise of the evangelical counsels is rendered by the Fall incompatible with property, marriage and  autonomy establishes the distinction between priesthood and kingship (because, in fallen man, the state of perfection required by priesthood is incompatible with the requirements of kingship) but the delayed effect of the Fall postpones the necessity of investing these offices in separate persons. Adam passes the plenipotentiary sovereignty of the human race to Seth, Seth to Noah, Noah to Shem (who I am assuming is Melchizedek), Melchizedek to Abraham, Abraham to Isaac, Isaac to Jacob and Jacob to the people of Israel as a whole. In the Exodus the full distinction between family and commonwealth, priesthood and magistracy is established. These successions pass down through the Levites and the scribes, the judges and the Davidic line until they converge once more in the Messiah Who reigns for ever and administers the Church militant through St Peter and the Apostles and their successors down to the end of time (ideally assisted by a suitably docile temporal power).

This resolves the question of a hypothetical moment of social destruction and re-constitution. The unqualifiedly perfect society in this world – the City of God – The Catholic Church – is indestructible and will endure until the end of time. The hypothesis of social destruction and re-constitution can never be realised. The question of the nature and prerogatives of the family in the abstract is best answered in the eloquent words of the Irish constitution, “The State recognises the Family as the natural primary and fundamental unit group of Society, and as a moral institution possessing inalienable and imprescriptible rights, antecedent and superior to all positive law.” The contingency upon the Divine Will of man’s actual end in any order of providence means that the sovereign authority in the perfect society can necessarily only be established by positive revelation – even were man’s end merely proportionate to his nature. As it is, God made us for Himself and the sovereignty is taken by the Divine King Jesus Christ Himself and wielded on earth through the power of the keys.

On the canon, the fact that Our Lord appeals to the prophets does not prove that there was a universally accepted canon in His time (and we know there was not) still less that it was the sixteenth century Protestant one. The NT scriptures are appealed to by the pre-fifth century fathers and we know (because they say so) that there was no universally accepted canon in their day. Of course Our Lord knew which books were inspired because He inspired them. Cath describes this point as “the strategy of discrediting the Jewish Scriptures” but it is nothing of the sort. Denying sola scriptura is not a denigration of Scripture it is just a proper identification of what Scripture is and what it seeks to accomplish. Cath presumably does not make the Islamic claim that the Scriptures are uncreated. This is not her discrediting Scripture it is just the truth about what Scripture is and is not.

In regard to 2 Timothy it is clear that Timothy was constituted in God’s covenant by the oral teaching of living persons and then given the scriptures “continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings which are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.” In fact here we have all three Scripture, Tradition and Magisterium: “continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, [Tradition] knowing from whom you learned it [Magisterium], and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings which are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus [Scripture].” It is true that Scripture can “make the man of God complete, and fully equipped for every good work” but he needs Tradition and the Magisterium to make him a man of God in the first place. Even in the unusual event that he encountered the Gospel and assented to it merely through picking up a copy of the Bible without oral preaching he would still be relying upon Tradition and the Magisterium because they identified the inspired books and compiled them. Scripture claims that Scripture provides doctrine and instruction to make a man of God perfect but not that it makes him a man of God or that it contains all the inspired doctrine and instruction there is to be had.

(Traite de la Paix Interieure, Part I ch7) 

She is quite wrong in supposing that I am attacking the authority of Scripture. I hold all of Scripture each and every part to be the inspired word of God free from all error in precisely the sense that the inspired author intended when he wrote it down. It is only the sufficiency of Scripture as a norm of doctrine that I (and the scriptures themselves) deny.

I am fully determined to hold fast to “the once-for-all deposit of divine truth in the world” but I deny that all of this deposit is contained in Scripture. Scripture itself states 2 Thess 2:15 “stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter.” Protestants may hold that everything passed on by word of mouth was subsequently written down but that is merely their claim, Scripture does not say so. John says that the world itself could not contain the books needed to record all that the Lord did. Protestants cannot use the claim that the “only place where apostolic teaching is known to exist subsequent to the apostles themselves is in the inspired Scriptures” as a premise because that is their desired conclusion. Catholics know that the fullness of Apostolic teaching subsists in the Catholic Church, in the faith of those baptised persons in communion with the successors of Peter and the Apostles.

Cath says “There is never the least hint that believers should turn to any resource outside the Scriptures in order to determine questions of doctrine or duty: the Scriptures themselves are, and claim to be, that very resource.” As we have seen they make no such claim but they do point us to a resource outside themselves in order to determine questions of doctrine or duty, the authority of the Apostles and their successors: Mtt 16:17-19; 18:15-18; Lk 22:28-32; Jn 21:15-17; Acts 1:20; 2 Tim 2:2.

That the scriptures render one complete (2 Tim 3:17) would only constitute a claim to their sufficiency if it were the scriptures with which one began. If on the other hand one begins with the word proclaimed by the living voice of the Apostles and their successors then the completeness given by the scriptures is achieved when they are added to the oral tradition of the Apostles and the authority of the Church not as an alternative to these. The very fact that Paul tells Timothy that Scripture is ‘profitable’ implies the use of Scripture is something supplemental to the basic activity of proclamation.

Cath’s citations do indeed show that the necessary revealed content to form the basis of a saving act of faith exists within Scripture (and many of its parts taken separately) but they do not show that the fullness of revealed truth and all the means morally necessary to persevere in God’s grace are contained in Scripture. Nor does John say that his gospel is “enough to warrant anyone to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God”. He says that he wrote it to teach us that Jesus is the Son of God but not that his text is self-authenticating. The content of many parts of Scripture is enough to form the content of an act of justifying faith but they are not enough to demonstrate that it is God Who speaks therein. Scripture assuredly often says that it is God Who speaks therein but so do many false revelations. For us to be certain that it is God Who speaks we would need to know that He had provided for the context and the interpretation of the text as well as the text itself. This is what the Catholic Church teaches He has provided through Tradition and the Magisterium. This is the Tradition to which Paul told the Thessalonians to hold fast and the authority established by Christ in Peter and the Twelve. For He does not fail in His purposes He would not provide us with an inadequate medium of transmission such as an isolated text would be. Even under the old law He did not leave the Scriptures without an authoritative interpreter as the Lord says in Mtt 23:2-3 “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; so practice and observe whatever they tell you, but not what they do; for they preach, but do not practice.”

Not only does the sufficiency of the content of many parts of Scripture for the act of faith not demonstrate the formal sufficiency of Scripture but it does not demonstrate either that all that is necessary for the believer to persevere is contained in Scripture. I appreciate that Cath may think that only an act of faith is necessary to be saved but I cannot see how this would not force her to declare most of Scripture superfluous. She herself has admitted that John’s Gospel alone suffices to form the matter of an act of faith. Why then did God give us the other seventy-two books (or however many there are in the Protestant canon)?

Which books and which parts of those books are inspired cannot be gauged from Scripture itself. The fact that many passages in Scripture assert that they are authoritative does not help to establish the canon. The Protestant canon of the OT did not exist in Our Lord’s time. The LXX and the canon of the Essenes are more extensive and the Sadducees only accepted the Pentateuch. The Protestant canon of the OT is the canon of the Pharisees adopted after the destruction of the temple. But as we have seen the Pharisees supplemented this with a vast body of oral tradition. The Protestant canon of the NT has been fluid from the beginning. Luther rejected four books of the NT and whether or not Cath owns Luther she cannot deny that it would be rather odd to claim the canon is self-authenticating when the first person to clearly state the doctrine of sola scriptura arbitrarily jettisoned many books of both Testaments. Today of course most communities claiming descent from the Reformation reject the inspiration and Apostolic authorship of Scripture in any meaningful sense.

As I mentioned I do not deny the inspired and inerrant authority of Scripture just its sufficiency. When I deny its sufficiency I mean it does not contain all that Christ revealed or all that is morally necessary to persevere in God’s grace or all that is logically necessary to verify its own contents. One cannot cite the use of the Apostles’ teaching as the rule of right belief as an argument in favour of sola scriptura because that assumes that only Scripture contains the Apostles’ teaching and that Scripture is self-verifying as Apostolic, which is precisely the point at issue.

At the Last Supper Christ prayed “I do not pray for these only, but also for those who believe in me through their word, that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.” Jn 17:20-21. When He raised Lazerus He said “Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me. I knew that thou hearest me always, but I have said this on account of the people standing by, that they may believe that thou didst send me.” Jn 11:41-42. In a secondary sense Christ’s prayer refers to those baptised persons who fall outside the heirachical boundaries of His Church. But in the primary sense Christ’s prayer for the unity of those who believe through the words of the Apostles is simply answered as all His prayers are answered. It is not answered in the trivial sense that all those who truly believe whoever they may be and wherever they are scattered are in agreement with one another. It is answered in such a manner that “the world may believe that thou hast sent me.” The unity of Christ’s followers is visible and clear, it is a mark of distinction between those who follow the word of the Apostles and those who do not. It is not to be found among the adherents of the false doctrine of sola scriptura but rather it subsists in the One Holy Catholic Apostolic and Roman Church.

Just now, I was talking to Aelianus about Our Lord telling St. Peter that we are to forgive our brother until seventy times seven (Math. 18, 21-22), or, seven times in a day (Luke, 17, 3-4).

What struck me some while ago is that St. Luke specifically mentions the sinner repenting, while St. Matthew does not. I do not know if it was a sermon that directed me to the question or not: but might there be a difference between situations where our brother repents (and so implicitly, at least, asks for forgiveness), and where, without repentence, he (or she, says the gender-equality conditioned university employee) might even go happily on sinning?

Given that even Aelianus said this was interesting question and one should look it up in the Catena Aurea, and given that I was given a very impressive edition of this splendid work some time ago, I felt it my duty to do so. The result:

The comments on St. Matthew, by St. Jerome, St. Chrysostomos, and St. Augustine, seem to focus on (i) the fact that in the face of the overwhelming mercy of Our Lord we are of course to forgive our brother, and (ii) why Our Lord did not mean to say it was O.K. not to forgive the seventy-eighth time.

Among the comments on St. Luke, however, some seem to specifically take the fact o repentance into account, particularly the following:

AMBROSE; After the parable of the rich man who is tormented in punishment, Christ added a commandment to give forgiveness to those who turn themselves from their trespasses, lest any one through despair should not be reclaimed from his fault; and hence it is said, Take heed to yourselves.

BEDE; But we must mark, that He does not bid us forgive every one who sins, but him only who repents of his sins. For by taking this course we may avoid offenses, hurting no one, correcting the sinner with a righteous zeal, extending the bowels of mercy to the penitent.

While I do not suggest that we all check ourselves lest we irresponsibly have forgiven an unrepenting brother, I still think that an interesting consideration. If the more knowledgable or more pious than me have any further comments on this, I would be glad to learn.

 So many possible captions for this picture. The Dead Poor Clares  (they take evangelical poverty seriously in Glasgow). What the average Briton thinks nuns are like? We’re still better looking than Catherine of Siena?

Aelianus and I were talking about people seeming to be nervous about visiting enclosed nun friends. This is daft, really. After all, even if our age group was one likely to have had their hands caned by Sister Scary, enclosed nun friends cannae cane anyone’s hands through the parlour grille. It’s not really any different from arranging to meet up with a friend during work hours – you need to arrange a time, you have to meet at her work and she can’t get away for very long, but it’s always worth it.

So go and visit your friends in monasteries.

The well-preserved nuns in the piccie are Clarisse Eremite, a single monastery of Poor Clares founded in the C17 to keep a peculiar version of the rule. It was one of five monasteries founded by one woman in honour of the five wounds. Or something. Can’t remember the details, whether she was a mystic or a pious woman with money or both. In the sixties they were amalgamated with some more mainstream Poor Clares, as the monastery was in a state after the war. Some decades later the monastery was once more made autonomous, but they now keep some boring old normal version of the rule. Boring.

I’ve come across quite a few folk writing that they gave up on the breviary because they couldn’t get the hang of all the jumping around and whatnot. Fair enough, given that my professional chess player buddy is also finding it a challenge.

The Poor Clare Coletttines of Ty Mam Duw offer personal tuition! They do this using the one-volume edition.

Here is the link to sign up. You could pass it on to friends, parish newsletters, …

Gran’s medicines were running out recently, and we phoned the clinic where her repeat prescriptions have been written out for the past six years. Turns out we can’t just toddle along and collect the receipt anymore; we had to make an appointment. For three weeks in advance. This was the end of December. On the first of January, new rules for NFZ (NHS) prescriptions came into force, putting the responsibility for checking a patient’s insurance and the degree of refund to which he is entitled for each medicine, on the doctor.

A couple of weeks ago  Gran got some kind of cough bug, and, since she is ancient, frail and asthmatic, I got a doctor in to see her. “Handy, in a way” Ithought to myself, “she can write us out the standing order prescriptions”. Nice lady said she couldnt’ write us NFZ-refunded prescriptions for two of Gran’s problems, because they belong to specializations in medicine which her specialization doesn’t cover de iure (though it does de facto), and we didn’t have the documentation of the original specialists’ diagnoses and treatment. She wrote us out prescriptions for one packet of everything, just so we could in case of necessity get things at full price to tide us over. This took a long time, because the ministry of health’s server was overloaded (with doctors looking up the refunded medicines list).

On Wednesday we hopped into a taxi and went to the other end of Warsaw (where, for a long reason, Gran’s GP is)  for the doctor’s appointment. Turns out 6 pm is not so much our appointment, as the time when Dr Iksińska finishes work and starts writing out repeat prescriptions. We arrived twenty five minutes early, and were fifth in the queue. It took the poor woman twenty minutes to look up all Gran’s medicines and the degree of refund to which she was entitled. And that without the asthma medicines, because it turns out all the documents for that are with the asthma specialist, and having neither copies of the documents nor the appropriate specialization, she couldn’t write us a refundable prescription for them. Nor, really, ought she have for one other thing, but Gran piped up “Oh, I have that at home” (berenike mentally slaps forehead – why didn’t she remember this when the other doctor came to see her?) – so we get that prescription on the solemn promise that I will deliver a copy of the document as soon as humanly possible, in case ministry inspectors swoop in to check files. I arrange with the receptionist for a copy of all Gran’s documentation in that clinic (which, it turns out, isnt’ much, and I am going to have to do the rounds to collect copies of it all from all over the place),  to be picked up on Tuesday. Other end of town, remember.

We get home, I leave Gran taking off her boots and saying she’ll peel potatoes, and leg it to the chemist’s (it’s getting late). I hand over the receipt, the girl takes it and goes round the back. And then comes back, and says, “I know this is mad, but – you see the doctor has written the patient’s details in black ink, and the actual prescription in blue ink? And has only stamped the bottom half? We can’t accept it, without a stamp on both parts, because of the change of ink. Even though it’s obviously the same handwriting.”

I made some noises of despair, and then I’m afraid I just turned and walked out without saying anything else.  The next morning I phoned the clinic to see if the doctor is in that day. It takes a while to get through, I have to try three numbers repeatedly. “Yes, she’ll be here till 1.” At half past twelve, a long metro trip and some slushy trudging later, I walk into the clinic clutching the hospital document I’d promised to bring, and the prescriptions. “No, Dr Iksińska left a while ago.” “But, but, but…” “No, she works till noon today.”  Bear in mind that already that morning Gran had not had any tablets for one of her more pressing conditions.

Receptionist is surprised at tale of chemist woe, and suggests I try the one next door. I do. They don’t blink. This is on the one hand welcome, obviously, on the other – seems Aged Parent was right when she’d told me the day before that I should have asked to see evidence of the regulation preventing them from accepting the two-tone prescription. The next bit of joy – there’s one pill they don’t have in stock, I’ll have to come back tomorrow. Namely, today. The third day in a row, a trip across the whole of Warsaw (and I don’t have a travel pass).  I just hope that receptionist has the photocopies ready, or it’ll be another trip on Tuesday.

ARGH!

Related: for any  Poles  who happen to read this  blog:

Until 1861 buggery was, in English law, a capital offence. It remained illegal until 1967. Undoubtedly sodomy is an unpleasant vice with serious social consequences, but a capital offence? It has generally been assumed by contemporary Catholics and those with some sort of a commitment to reason and nature that opposition to the institutionalisation of sodomy through ‘anti-discrimination’ legislation and the creation of ‘same-sex civil unions’ and ‘Gay marriage’ does not imply a desire to return to the legal settlement prior to 1967 still less 1861. Is this assumption correct? What could have motivated our forebears (admittedly rather trigger-happy in such matters) to demand the death penalty for buggery?

The most explicit passage in scripture dealing with the immorality and significance of unnatural intercourse is contained in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans 1:18-32. The passage deserves quotation in full,

“The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of men who by their wickedness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse; for although they knew God they did not honour him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their senseless minds were darened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man or birds or animals or reptiles. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonouring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever! Amen. For this reason God gave them up to dishonourable passions. Their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in their own persons the due penalty for their error. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a base mind and to improper conduct. They were filled with all manner of wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice. Full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity, they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God’s decree that those who do such things deserve to die, they not only do them but approve those who practice them.”

There is according to St Paul a vital link between atheism and sodomy. God abandons to unnatural lust those who refuse the imperative of nature and reason to worship Him. This is clearly illustrated in the history of Britain and other countries since the middle of the twentieth century.

The crucial question arises from verse 32 “they know God’s decree that those who do such things deserve to die”. To what does it refer? It is clear that “they” are not as such the recipients of revelation. The entire passage concerns God and the Natural Law as knowable through reason and nature not through revelation. What then are “such things”. There are two possibilities. Either it refers to the list which extends from verse 29 to verse 31 “wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice. Full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity, they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless” or it refers to the earlier “unnatural” and “shameless acts” of verses 26 to 27. Both interpretations are possible. How could men know by reason alone that those who are (for example) “disobedient to parents” deserve to die.? This is not as outrageous as it seems. God created man out of nothing man owes Him an infinite debt of gratitude. As Newman famously asserted, the Catholic Church would prefer to see the destruction of the entire material order than a single venial sin be committed. The mortal gravity of sin is an important consideration in understanding the theology of justification upon which St Paul is about to embark in this Epistle. Nevertheless the restrictive “these things” seems to imply the Apostle is distinguishing certain exceptionally wicked acts from others. If this is so then the list in verse 29 to 31 seems oddly vague while the specific identification of male and female homosexual acts in verses 26 to 27 makes a lot more sense. I do not think that the text alone allows of a certain decision on the matter. The possibility arises nonetheless that the Apostle is teaching us that sodomy is of such gravity, and can be known by reason alone to be of such gravity, that (possibly uniquely) it can be seen from reason alone that the specific penalty of death is demanded for it in Natural Law. Whether that sanction would fulfil the criteria necessary for it to be applied by the state is another question again but a prudential one.

The possibility arises therefore that St Paul is teaching that not only should sodomy be a crime but that it cannot coherently even be opposed as an immoral act unless it be acknowledged that it should be, in a rightly ordered commonwealth, a capital crime.

Videmus terrenis animalibus faciem terrae decorari hominemque ad imaginem et similitudinem tuam cunctis inrationabilibus animantibus ipsa tua imagine ac similitudine, hoc est rationis et intellegentiae virtute, praeponi, et quemadmodum in eius anima aliud est quod consulendo dominatur, aliud quod subditur ut obtemperet, sic viro factam esse etiam corporaliter feminam, quae haberet quidem in mente rationalis intellegentiae parem naturam, sexu tamen corporis ita masculino sexui subiceretur, quemadmodum subicitur appetitus actionis ad concipiendam de ratione mentis recte agendi sollertiam. videmus haec et singula bona et omnia bona valde.

We behold the face of the earth decked out with earthly creatures, and man, created after Thy image and likeness, even through that Thy very image and likeness (that is the power of reason and understanding), set over all irrational creatures. And as in his soul there is one power which has dominion by directing, another made subject, that it might obey; so was there for the man, corporeally also, made a woman, who in the mind of her reasonable understanding should have a parity of nature, but in the sex of her body, should be in like manner subject to the sex of her husband, as the appetite of doing is fain to conceive the skill of right-doing from the reason of the mind. These things we behold, and they are severally good, and altogether very good.