Pints With Aquinas - Criticizing the Church With Filial Piety w/ Fr. Gregory Pine O.P.

Episode Date: May 27, 2023

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Hello, my name is Fr. Gregory Pine and I'm a Dominican friar in the province of St. Joseph and this is Pines with Aquinas. In case you were wondering, I am somewhere between 6'3 and 6'4. For those of you who do better with centimeters, that's somewhere around 192 centimeters. Why do I mention this? Well, because when I meet people they often say, you are taller than I thought you were. So you have been forewarned. Is that pertinent to this video?

Not at all. In this video we're going to talk about how to criticize the Church. Why? Well, I don't think that we need encouragement on that particular front because it comes quite naturally to many of us. But because I think there are ways of doing it that are better and ways of doing it that are worse. So we want to grow in virtue when it comes to this particular thing because on the one hand we don't want to like whitewash Our experience of the church as we communicate it to others nor do we want to demonize the church as we communicate that relationship There is a good way to go about it. So let's think about it together. Here we go Okay, i'm increasingly conscious of the way in which we somewhat unconsciously adopt the stance of our contemporaries.

And when it comes to criticizing institutions, I think that our contemporaries can be quite nihilistic. That is to say they have like no fundamental commitments that tend to be kind of like bomb throwing and yeah, affiliation denying if it is convenient for them. And I think that one way we can kind of get at this phenomenon is by thinking about how we amongst our contemporaries conceive of relationships or like how we conceive of the way in which we belong to or are affiliated with our members of different institutions. And I think two notes which are common in this 21st century experience is that we think of them often as elective and we think of them often as political.

So when I say elective I mean I choose in and I choose out. And no one is going to condition whether I choose in or whether I choose out. It's just me, right? It's up to me and my sovereign will, which is unassailable, which is a cool word. So it falls within the bounds of my whimsy or caprice, which are delightful words, whimsical and capricious words. And so I make a judgment based on whatever I deem important in this particular situation, whether it be like my physical or emotional or psychological well-being, maybe I attain to a certain evaluation of my spiritual well-being but we can

leave that off for present and then I might create a relationship or terminate a relationship as it as it suits okay so maybe it's time to create distance I found this relationship too complicated so I just ghost an individual maybe I determine that this person is too needy, too clingy, the relationship is toxic, maybe it's violent, abusive, okay so I just cut them off entirely. Which, you know, in certain circumstances it might be necessary to create distance in a relationship or even to terminate a relationship, but I think that there's a kind of spirit at work in many of our relationships, which makes it so that we're just less situated, we're less embodied, we're less incorporated, and as a result of which we kind of float free of other individuals. We might kind of touch their respective universes tangentially as we pass by, but we have just

less of a sense of how our lives are bound up. Okay, so that's the first, this elective dimension. The second is a kind of political dimension to a lot of our relationships and I think that we think of a lot of our relationships as a kind of exchange of power or an exchange of what, delight or use or whatever it is. Okay, we think about them in terms of exchange and so we'll often, you know, prosecute these relationships or we'll pursue these relationships based on what is best for that balance of wealth or honor, fame or glory or power or pleasure or use or whatever. So I think about it in terms of how to accumulate and advance my particular goods. And if this suits, cool, I'll continue with it. If it doesn't, okay, then I'll have to rearrange. A problem with this, I think, is that it tends to flatten our relationships into this worldly considerations,

because we think about goods as scarce and we want to accumulate the most of them, and that'll mean depriving others of them. And so every kind of gain by another represents a loss for me, and that just leads to an economy of envy and resentment. And so you'll hear people talking about evaluating relationships based on how they can leverage them. We want to keep our hands clean and not associate ourselves with anything which might age poorly. You keep receipts in relationships so you can potentially embarrass somebody down the line.

So why am I proposing this? I'm saying that we often approach our relationships in terms which are set for us by this present evil age, by our 21st century contemporaries who are often nihilistic in their engagement with reality, and I think two notes of that is that it's highly elective and highly political. Those aren't necessarily bad things, but I think that they do better or they do well when they're more so situated, embodied, and have a deeper appreciation for membership and corporation, the fact of a certain stability or permanence in our relationships. Okay, so let's talk then about criticizing the church. When we criticize the church, what's the goal? Well, what's the goal in all things? The glory of God and the salvation of souls. So in this setting, or in this instance, what we have at heart, what we have in mind and at heart, is the church's fidelity, our fidelity, the fidelity of those to whom we testify or to whom we witness.

All right. And we can think about it in terms of witness, if it's going to have any worth or any meaning. And I think that in this, we have to check both the elective tendency and the political tendency where they tend to get out of control. Okay. So when we criticize the church, we have to make clear to ourselves and to others that this isn't like a choose in or choose out situation. All right. I'm not just affiliated with the Catholic church. I'm incorporated into it.

At the heart of that word incorporated is the word body, because I'm a member of the body of which Christ is the head. By virtue of our baptism, we receive receive a character an image that st. Augustine uses to describe that character is the tattoo that a member of the Roman Legion would receive which said SPQR ascended in the people of Rome so it's something that's branded on you for your glory or for your shame depending upon how you comport yourself so you're in okay now obviously people can choose against by heresy or schism or apostasy, but like when we criticize the church, we're seeking to cultivate the habits of mind

and heart, which help us to know it and love it better, right? To serve its fidelity and our fidelity to the church. Okay. So you hear people say things like, uh, you know, whatever about whichever president, you know, he's not my president. Okay. We, we like, you can, whatever about whichever president, you know, he's not my president, okay, we like, you can't say that about the pope, not that people necessarily do, I'm not singling anyone out, but like, we don't have that available to us. He is our pope, like whether you like it or not, he is, and so that has to be in the forefront or in the foreground of the way that

we engage with the church. Okay, that kind of leads us in then to the political tendency. When we think about our relationships here in the church, the Lord has promised to be with us always, so we have the assurance that the church is indefectible. That pertains to the universal church. It doesn't necessarily pertain to local churches. So you can think about the spread of Islam in northern Africa in like, what would it be, the late seventhth and early 8th century and how there are hundreds of dioceses there in northern Africa and subsequently there were not.

So local churches can fail. They can be wiped off the map as it were. And that might be by invasion or it might be by infidelity. So when it comes to the synodal way in Germany, a lot of people are anxious that the Church might enter into schism. Okay, it might. The Lord has promised to be faithful to His Church, to be present to it always. That's the universal Church. But the local church in Germany, in some way, shape or form, might fail. That's a possibility. But that need not cause us... obviously there's an acute anxiety associated with that for German Catholics because it's like a deep, deep betrayal. But still, you have the assurance, the fixed, the firm, the stable assurance that the Lord will be with you always and that he will provide you means necessary for your flourishing and salvation. So then when we criticize the Church in this setting, we think about it again more in terms of testimony than in terms of lobbying.

There are going to be political arrangements that work in the Church, maybe even political machinations to speak about them less sympathetically. But the Church's life and our fidelity to that life is always going to transcend the merely political. Okay. It has to think, yeah, like I said, more in terms of testifying than in terms of lobbying, even while lobbying may be important at a particular time and place and in particular circumstances. Okay. So when we criticize the church, if we do, um, we want to criticize the church from a salvation historical perspective with like this greater stability and fixity from advantage of faith, hope and charity, and charity. Because that's what matters.

Okay, so then let me propose a couple images for criticism and then just draw out some takeaway points when it comes to our practice. Okay, so I think one image for how you might criticize the Church is, you can think about it in terms of how you criticize your family. Okay? When we criticize our family, we're always cognizant of the fact that at the end of the day, it's our family. Okay? Like St. Thomas will talk about the fact that at the end of the day, it's our family. Okay? Like St. Thomas will talk about the quasi-potential part of justice. Jargony, Father Gregory, keep going. All right, so the virtue of piety.

I love my parents in a kind of justice, right? So I owe my parents a kind of subordination or submission or a kind of deference or respect, honor, because they've given me life. And he extends that logic to one's country. So you recognize that fact. Otherwise you live in constant rebellion against it and that has a claim on you. And so when we criticize our family, we criticize that to which we pertain, which has a claim on us and which we cannot escape even while we might set ourselves up against it, it remains the case that it's our family.

So this is, I mean, it's situated in terms of blood and it's situated in terms of love, not just an elective or political love, but a love which is a matter of a likeness, which is a matter of, you know, a goodness made accessible by knowledge. So when we criticize our family, there are things that you say and there are things that you don't say, right? Because you have greater sensitivity, you have a greater vulnerability in the presence of your family because they know you better, they ought to love you better. And so when we often go home we feel ourselves to be at our worst because we can pick each other apart and so that should make us more solicitous for the good of the other, more

attentive as it were to the other's good. So when we criticize our family we do so with this cognizance that it's mine and I'm its. So one takeaway point from this is that there can be a kind of discretion which needs to be present. We have to be discreet or we have to exercise discretion in our criticism of the church because we don't want to be violent because you have to live with these people. It's easy to be violent on the internet but it doesn't really amount to much because you can like flail and gnash your teeth and do all kinds of crazy things but as long as you don't read the comments there's not going to be much in the way of consequences. But there are consequences when you criticize at home because you have to live with those

people. Sometimes you have to sleep in the same bed as those people in the case of married people and in the case of kids that share the same bed. So we need to be conscious of the way in which our criticism might potentially wound, and then how we are responsible for healing those wounds. So there are certain sadnesses in life which are just meant to be brought to the Lord. That doesn't mean we cover them up, but it also doesn't mean that we expose all of the ugliness. Sometimes we need to be careful in the way in which we navigate that. Okay, another image. You might think too about how you criticize your own moderate.

For some of you, you're like, I don't care. I went to a community college. I feel nothing for it. Some of you are like, I went to an elite school and I'm embarrassed that I went to an elite school because I can't mention it with people mentioning the fact that I'm mentioning my elite school. Mention, mention, mention. Here I'm thinking about my own experience, so I'm just going to talk about that. So I went to Franciscan University of Steubenville in the United States in conservative Catholic circles. I should just say like in faithful Catholic circles because it's not so much a matter of conservative or liberal. But like you have a handful of schools, these like Newman Guide schools, which uphold the

faith in its integrity and provide a healthy environment for which students can look to their teachers and their administrators to give them the faith. Okay, so people who have gone to these schools sometimes have arguments about which one's better. So you've got Christendom and University of Dallas and Benedictine and YouMarry and dot dot dot. I will have inevitably left your school off so my apologies. Okay now when you make like comparative claims among these sometimes you know it's like people will come at you and be like wow Steubenville is thus and such

and blah blah blah and I'm like bruh it's like easy does it. Steubenville is doing a beautiful thing and it's making missionary disciples. So like when I'm with Steubenville friends we can be pretty candid about Steubenville's you know like deficits or excesses or however you want to describe it but it's it's it's easier to share those types of things because it's in this setting of love. Whereas when I'm talking to other people it's like, bruv, come at me. You know like I don't I don't want to be involved in this type of conversation because I don't know that you know my school in the way that I know my school so I can't rely upon you to sympathize with my

school in the way that I sympathize with my school. So yeah, I think setting matters and I think that that kind of baseline love is super important to bring to bear on the conversation. So maybe a takeaway point from this is that we should think about the way that we criticize in terms of edification. So like there are things that you say within a group of fellow grads, and then things that you say without. You might not speak as vociferously or vehemently about excesses and defects in those situations. And that's not again because you're embarrassed about them or because you're covering them up, it's just because you're being, like I said, discreet.

So we have a real responsibility for not creating scandal, for not bewildering or bemusing those with whom we speak, like in a false sense of transparency. Okay, so again, easy to be a bold prophetic voice online, but you can't shape how others are going to receive or hear what you share online. So I think you need to be especially careful when doing these types of things online. Okay, at the end of the day, maybe just two final takeaway points. I think that we need to, yeah, comport ourselves with real sympathy, like a baseline sympathy. So I was reading an article which was critical of Pope Francis' efforts at curial reform, but it

actually began with an acknowledgement that, you know, it said something like, Pope Francis is among those most steadfast, you know, in the recent, you know, like, episcopacy or papacy to attempt reform. So I was like, cool, you know, like Episcopacy or Papacy to attempt to reform. So I was like, cool, all right, acknowledgement of an attempt, but then a criticism of how it's been actually deployed with positive suggestions as to how it might be corrected. Will that amount to much in terms of curio reform? I don't know, but it struck me at the very least

as responsible and principled argumentation. Okay. And I think that this baseline sympathy, it's especially important because we're not just judging things. We're not just saying like, that color orange is stupid and that wall is all pockmarked. We're judging people, okay? And things don't stand to lose or they don't stand to suffer from our judgments, but people do. And so we introduce a kind of, I don't know what you would call it, but like a kind of humility of judgment with respect to people, cognizant of the fact that we don't know their interior life, and while we can judge their actions, we can't judge their intentions with perfect clarity.

And so we need to come before them with a certain hesitancy or reverence. And that's true of the Church. Or that's true of those who constitute the Church, or criticism of those who constitute the Church. Okay. And then I would say simply that, you know, all this said, I think that some criticism is good, is healthy, because it's an expression of a desire for reform, a desire for growth and healing, which is good. And I also think that it helps others to situate their own struggles. I think it's good to have, you know, small conversations or exchanges with people who might otherwise feel like they're going crazy. So I was talking

to a woman who lives in a diocese in which a priest who lives an openly gay lifestyle was like called upon by the family life office to give a presentation on his whatever exploits. That is not a sympathetic presentation of what happened but it wasn't too far from that. And as I was talking I was like that's nuts, that's crazy. And as I was saying that she's like, it is right? And I was like, totally. She's like, thank you, okay, I feel better right now because I just didn't know what to make of it. It's like you can make of it, you know, this, it's great. Right? So I think it can be helpful to criticize because otherwise oftentimes, otherwise oftentimes, oftentimes, we might

feel gaslit by it. It's just like, what's going on? How do I make sense of this? Is this right? Is this wrong? I just don't have the wherewithal to navigate it. It's just like, what's going on? How do I make sense of this? Is this right? Is this wrong? I just don't have the wherewithal to navigate it. Okay? I think in large part you can ignore ecclesial politics and it won't matter too terribly much for your life. But insofar as it impinges upon you or it visits you, you know, by day or by night, that you, you know, it can be helpful to formulate an opinion upon it and then to make subsequent judgments as to how you're going to engage, you know, those responsible or teach your children or whatever it is. And in those settings, it's good to have conversations with other Catholics, you know, even critical

conversations because they help us to formulate our judgments and then to act upon them in fidelity, in truth and in love. But always when we do this, I think we do it with a sense of rootedness, you know, like what Chesterton refers to when he describes patriotism in Orthodoxy, he's like, we're not optimists, we're not pessimists, we're patriots. We love the thing because it's ours, okay, and because we love it, you know, with this kind of simplicity, with this kind of, you know, tenacity, it will be transformed by our love. So we don't love what it could become, except from the point of departure that we love it

as it is, alright, and that's kind of where we stand vis-a-vis the church, because to whom else shall we go, for she alone has the words of everlasting life. And I think that if we act out of this fidelity, then our criticism will be made visible, or it will be made known as an expression of love. And I think that that's ultimately how we want to shape it. Because it's for the fidelity of the Church, it's for our fidelity, it's for the fidelity of those to whom we testify. Boom! This, my friend, was a little too long. But that's what I wanted to say.

Okay, three quick announcements. One of them is different. Stay tuned. First, this is Pines with Aquinas. If you haven't yet, please do subscribe to the channel, push the bell and get sweet email updates when other cool things come out. Second, I pertain to a podcast called God's Plaining, which is awesome, and we had an episode come out recently called Is it the Pope's Fault? So you might want to check that out because it's pertinent. I'm not on it, but two wise and

hilarious fellows are. And then lastly, my province, the Dominican province of St. Joseph, is having the Dominican Rosary Pilgrimage on September 30th at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception which is going to just be like a big old rosary jamboree. So you can find out more information at the website so just google Dominican Rosary Pilgrimage and there's going to be preaching and praying and pilgrimaging and processing and chatting and eating and all kinds of things and you'll have the opportunity sometimes I get ahead of myself when I speak so fast it's like blah you'll have the opportunity to chat with you know fresh from the tamisic institute and god's

planning and more besides so yeah I'd look forward I look forward I wouldn't look forward that would be a conditional I do look forward statement uh to meeting you there chatting with you there I hope to you know have the opportunity of seeing you there uh so that's all I got all right know my prayers for you please pray for me and I'll look forward to chatting with you next time on pines with Aquinas