Joe Heschmeyer debunks seven of the most common myths about the Catholic Church.

Transcription:

Joe:

Welcome back to Shameless Popery; I’m Joe Heschmeyer, and today I want to explore seven of what I think are the most common misconceptions and myths about the Catholic church and what the church believes. These are going to be some misconceptions that you may have heard before, ones you may in fact believe or may have believed, and I think it’s important whether you’re Catholic or not Catholic, to know that these misconceptions are false. I mean, after all, if you’re going to accept or reject Catholicism, you should at least accept or reject it based on what it actually is, what it actually teaches, and not on a fictional version, it would be a shame to make it a decision that important based on bad information. So I want to look at misconceptions coming both from nonbelievers like atheists, but also fellow Christians like Protestants. Number one on that list has got to be the idea that the Pope is always right.

This is partly our fault. We have a doctrine called Papal infallibility, and if all you know is the title, it’s easy to imagine that this means the Pope is never wrong about anything whatsoever. And if that was what we believed to be super easy to disprove Catholicism, you could say, aha. Look at this time, a pope was wrong about something. In fact, this is kind of a longstanding joke among Catholics. So for instance, in the early 20th century or mid 20th century novel brides had revisited by the Catholic author, evil and Law. There’s a character of Rex Matri, and Rex is a Protestant who is in the process of maybe converting to Catholicism in order to marry his Catholic fiance, Julia. And along the way he’s meeting with the priest and the kind of running gag is that Rex has a very confused understanding of anything about Catholic theology. He’s ready to say yes to anything, but he has a very funny kind of misconception about Catholicism. And so at one point, the priest is pressing him on the question of papal infallibility. And I always am reminded of this scene. I’m always tickled by it. I’m going to share it in the hopes that maybe you’ll find it as funny and illuminating as I do.

CLIP::

Supposing the Pope looked up and saw a cloud and said it’s going to rain, would that be about to happen? Oh yes, father. And supposing it didn’t, supposing there was no rain,

I suppose it’d be sort of raining spiritually only we were too sinful to see it.

Joe:

Like I said, I find that cliff hilarious every time. But okay, if that’s not what it is, if papal infallibility isn’t the belief that the Pope could go out and be a weather forecaster with a hundred percent accuracy, what is it? Well, it’s part of this broader concept of infallibility. And so the idea was described by the congregation for the doctrine of the faith, which is in charge of helping to explain Catholic theology, Catholic doctrine back in 1973 by it starting with the idea that God himself is infallible. Now, God is literally infallible. He could be the perfect weather forecaster, but he’s deed to bestow upon his people, the church, a certain shared infallibility, which notice the language here is restricted to matters of faith and morals. So something like the weather, that’s not a question of faith or morals. So okay, and that’s not it.

And notice also that this is something the people of God shared. So if all Christians just know that X is good and Y is bad, this is true and that’s false. We believe the Holy Spirit has led the people of God into that. Whether there’s been an official papal decree or not, if everybody knows Matthew, mark, Luke, and John are gospels that we should accept as inspired scripture. It doesn’t matter whether the church has come out with an official pronouncement or not because one level of infallibility works the people of God, Christians acting collectively. Now, it’s hard to always pin down where that is, but you should notice already the position of infallibility includes what we might call people infallibility, not just papal infallibility. And it’s clearly not about everything. We’re not saying everyone is right about everything that wouldn’t make any sense. We disagree on all sorts of things, but the point is when we aren’t disagreeing, Christians are able to stand shoulder and shoulder and say this thing is true.

That is a very strong indication that it is true because God has led us into that truth, not our own human reasoning. What does that look like for the Pope in particular? Well, we’re going to talk about the majesty, the called the teaching authority of the church that Jesus Christ shares in the governance of the church by his own will. He didn’t have to do this with certain teachers. There’s clearly teachers within Christianity. And so when the bishops, we’ll get to the Pope in a second, when the bishops scattered around the world are teaching a common doctrine in union with the Pope, the successor of Peter, and they present a doctrine to be held irrevocably. Notice this. It’s not just that they think a certain thing is true, but that they insist this is a thing you have to believe. It is presented as a doctrine to be held.

We believe that this is infallible. So notice it’s not just everything on any topic. It’s not even just everything on faith and morals, it’s things on faith and morals that are presented and not just presented but are presented as doctrines, as doctrines specifically that we have to hold. So as we’re going to see in a moment here, a proper understanding of infallibility, which again, whether you agree with it or disagree with it, a proper understanding isn’t that it’s some kind of special oracle that the or the bishops or anything they have, it’s instead a sort of divine protection from the Pope, a divine protection from the bishops. I’ll explain what I mean by that in a minute, but that’s the bishops now. But you can also see this in ecumenical councils or with the Pope. So in ecumenical council, when an ecumenical council again with the Pope defines a doctrine to be held, okay, that is a very clear instance of the church acting infallibly.

Likewise, when the Roman pontiff, again, the Pope speaks ex catheter, that means from the chair, not literally a chair, just from his authority. So when he’s exercising the office of pastor and teacher of all Christians, and through his supreme apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine. Notice not just sitting doctrine, a doctrine concerning faith and morals to be held by the universal church. So if those criteria are met, then we’re dealing with infallibility. Now, specifically, you should notice something, there’s a common thread here, this emphasis on defining a doctrine to be held or putting forward, a doctrine to be held. It doesn’t always have to be an actual definition, but it’s something that you have to hold as a Christian. So why would those things be infallible? Well, we can put the case maybe a little bit this way. Jesus tells us a couple important things.

Number one, that he’s the way, the truth and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through him. That’s John 14, six. So we have to hold to the truth, but we also have to hold to unity. Jesus at the Last Supper, the same place He tells us He’s the way the truth and the life also prays for his future followers. He says, I pray not for these only, but also for those who believe in me through their word that is us. So what is his prayer for you and me that we will all be one, even as he and the Father are one? Why that they may believe in us, that the world may believe that thou has sent me. So notice he’s saying we have to hold the unity and it’s vital for the success of the gospel that we do hold the unity.

Imagine how much more successful Christianity would be if we weren’t constantly fighting with one another. So we have to hold these two things according to Jesus, truth and unity. Now there’s more than that, but those two are the ones that are going to be really important for us, and we can even put that kind of in the opposite direction. If you reject truth, what happens? Well, second Peter two, St. Peter warns us about heretics who introduced destructive heresies, even denying the master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction. So if you reject truth for the sake of error, you are risking at least spiritual damnation. But likewise, if you reject the unity of the church, you’re also risking spiritual damnation. St. Paul, in his letter to the Galatians, talks about the works of the flesh, and he lifts them and includes things like enmity and strife and dissension and party spirit.

In other words, Christians who pit themselves against other Christians, Christians who break away from the unity of the church. And he warns that those who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. That’s an even clearer warning that that’s damnable. So you may not be a heretic, you may not be amatic. So here’s the kicker. If your teacher in the church, your bishop, your pope requires you to believe a certain doctrine in order to be a Christian, what are you going to do? Well, if that doctrine is erroneous, if the Pope says, by my infallible authority, I’m declaring this thing to be true and it’s false, that every one of us has to say, okay, well, I’m going to accept this false doctrine and become a heretic, or I’m going to break away from the church and become amatic. And Jesus told us we couldn’t do either of those things.

And remember in John 17 when he’s praying for his future followers, he knows the future. He’s God when he’s praying for us and telling us to remain one, he knows about corruption in the church. He knows about unworthy bishops and popes, and he knows about all of that stuff, and he doesn’t say, okay, unless you really disagree, then go form your own church. He doesn’t say that at all. So that’s why we believe in infallibility because it’s the only way to harmonize the biblical evidence. Otherwise you have this tension between truth and unity. And I think any Protestant who’s being honest will tell you they’ve experienced that tension. Do we break apart or do we stay one and just kind of fudge the differences? Neither of those. You don’t choose truth over unity. You don’t choose unity over truth. You choose unity in the truth.

That’s the actual biblical message, papal infallibility and more broadly, the infallibility of the church makes sense of that. But notice again, it doesn’t touch on everything. It touches on those things that are put forward as binding upon us as Christians because if it’s just an offhand comment the Popes makes, if he’s doing an airport interview and he says something kind of weird, you can say, I think that’s vague confusing. Maybe I disagree with it. I’m not out of the church for that. But if I’m required to believe in a thing, then either have been put into an impossible catch 22 of having to choose heresy or schism or that thing is true and the reason I’m being required to believe it is because it’s a true part of the gospel. Okay, that’s the first kind of myth I wanted to clear up. I think that’s a very common one.

We’re going to shift gears pretty dramatically here because the second myth is this idea the Catholic church is anti-sex. We hate sex, we hate pleasure, we hate anything like happiness, right? Well, there are a few things you should know that make you kind of question that. Belief number one, I mentioned this actually in the last week’s episode, but Catholics have traditional Catholics anyway, like the Latin masculine Catholics will say have the highest birth rate of any major group higher than Orthodox Jews, higher than Mormons, higher than Muslims, devout practicing especially this is looking again, more traditional Catholics have a tremendously high birth rate. Now, I don’t know if you know how that happens, but it pretty clearly is tied to sex. You can’t simultaneously say, why do you Catholics hate sex and have all these kids? Those two things don’t really make sense together. But more broadly, we just want to say this, sex is important, but it’s important not just because it’s an emotionally influential or physically pleasurable experience, but also because this is a way that new life is created.

And so it’s not enough that you just be thinking about yourself and your libido or even about the person that maybe you love or maybe you lust for. You also want to think about the fact that there may be children brought into the world through this, and so it makes sense for a healthy approach to sex, to be one that treats it very seriously, not because it’s evil, but because it’s powerful. Now, I want to say, what about the connection then to happiness? Do we just hate sex and happiness? It’s funny because there’s actually a good amount of data on this point, and it turns out if you listen to the Catholic church, you will be happier and in fact, you will have a better sex life. Now, I know people don’t often say that, but it is true, and we have data from this.

So for instance, and the Journal of Sex Research from last year, 2023, there’s an article called Religiosity, sex Frequency and Sexual Satisfaction in Britain, Britain because they have better data. But you could extrapolate this to other countries as well. Also significantly, Britain is a little bit less, well, a good deal, less Christian in terms of devotional practice in the United States. It also doesn’t have the same kind of puritanical heritage. So you would expect that everything that you’re going to hear here would be if anything more true in the US example, and you’ll see that a little better when I get into some of the data and some of the research. So what do they find? Well, the researchers had two hypotheses. Number one, they suspected that religious people would have less sex outside of marriage. Turns out that’s true. Number two, they hypothesized that religious people would actually be happier with their sex lives.

And it turned out that’s also true. So as they put it in accordance with our first hypothesis among single non cohabiting individuals, the more religious had less frequent sex compared to their less religious peers. That makes sense. If you think it’s wrong to fornicate, your less likely to fornicate than someone who’s like, I’m great with fornication. But the more surprising thing is, despite this, those who attributed greater importance to religion and religious beliefs reported higher satisfaction from their sex life. Now, notably, this includes both happy married people, but also people who aren’t having sex and are content with that who are single, but they’re not in CELs, they’re not involuntarily celibate, they’re voluntarily celibate, at least for the time being that those people are also happier. So married or unmarried people who were striving to practice Christian sexual ethic were happier. And this was especially true among women.

But we find that kind of the flip side to this is that higher approval of casual sex or sex without love was also found to be negatively associated with sexual satisfaction for both men and women. So what we can say is this, we live in a culture that broadly speaking, treat sex as something trivial, something we just do for pleasure. And you can watch almost any movie, almost any show, and get a strong sense of that because that’s the kind of entertaining salacious entertainment that keeps eyes on the screen and keeps moviegoer dollars, right? Like this is sex sells, but that message that sells isn’t true. The idea that you can go out and just live a life of pursuing casual sex and be happy, we can say by the numbers isn’t true. And again, you can’t just blame that unlike Puritan guilt because this is Great Britain, which has much less of any kind of puritanical influence that rather it’s like, no, no, this secular gospel of free sex is just actually unfulfilling.

Now, this is actually part of a broader trend, which is that religion is tied not to people being miserable, but actually being much happier than their non-religious peers. So Pew research looked at the US and several other countries back in 2019, and here’s some of the findings. They said more than a third of actively religious US adults, so 36% describe themselves as very happy compared with just a quarter of religiously inactive or religiously unaffiliated Americans. That’s a pretty big gap. So if you think about going from 25% up to 36%, you’re looking at an increase of 11% from 25 11, more than that is almost half as many more. Maybe that’s confusing math, but if you think about it in a group, if you had, well anyway, you get stats, right? You get the way these numbers work. I don’t want to give you more confusing numbers, but the point there is there’s a statistically significant difference that we’re finding that religious people are happier.

Now you might say, okay, that’s just cu us no across 25 other countries for which data is available actively religious people report being happier than the unaffiliated by a statistically significant margin in almost half of the countries, 12 of that’s not just more, that’s more to a big enough gap that they can say it’s statistically significant. So a big gap, and they’re happier than inactively religious adults in nine of the 25 countries. And you can actually, I’ve got the numbers there on the screen if you want to take ’em, look at them, and you’ll find this is just an across the board sort of pattern. It gets more interesting because they say the gaps are so some of the places you don’t see the same size kind of gaps, but you do see a pretty common pattern emerging, and in some cases the gaps are really striking.

So for instance, in Australia, 45% of actively religious adults say that they are very happy compared to only 32% of inactive and 33% of unaffiliated religious people. So there’s a marked happiness boost by being actively religious, which is totally contrary to the whole church hates pleasure, church hates happiness sort of thing. No, the church is showing you a way to be happier and be more pleased, including more pleased with your sex life. Strikingly also, there’s not one country in all the countries they looked at in which actively religious people are significantly less happy than others. Again, significantly meaning stats, margin of errors. In many countries they acknowledge there’s not much of a gap, but so you have basically two scenarios. In some places there’s not a clear happiness gap In other places, including the US and including Australia, there are these pretty big happiness gaps.

There’s never an unhappiness gap. There’s never a place where being a devout Christian means you’re more miserable than your secular peer. You’re either about the same level of happy or you’re much happier, and that includes in the us. So this myth that the church hates sexual pleasure or hates sex or hates happiness, all of this is absurdly false and is quite contrary to the data. Speaking of data, what about this idea of the church’s anti-science? If you’ve run in any kind of secular or especially atheist, new atheist kind of crowds, there’s a good chance you’ve heard this. Oh, these unreasonable dogmatists were just driven by faith and they hate reason. And chances are, if you press people on this, they’ll point to exactly one concrete example from Catholics. I mean, they might have some of evangelical Protestants who don’t like evolution or something like this, but usually they’ll point to one example Galileo, and I’m not even going to get into all of the details of the Galileo trial or why it’s really controversial or complicated.

I just want to say it’s absurd to basic critique of a 2000 year old institution with a billion people on the alleged maltreatment of one scientist. To go from that to saying, oh, the church is anti-science seems to be obviously pretty an absurd generalization to draw from. One example, if your sample size is one, you can’t draw much from that. But let’s broaden the sample size right now. Just we’ll stay in the realm of astronomy for a second. 33 Jesuits have lunar craters named after them. That’s just the Jesuits, just the society of Jesus, and they have lunar craters named after them. Why? Because they were all influential priest scientists who were so influential in the field of astronomy specifically that they wanted to honor them with craters on the moon, which is pretty cool. Now, you’ll find different numbers on that because turns out there are differences in terms of who’s in charge of naming lunar craters.

But in terms of the official names, were about 33. Some people put the number a little higher at 40. Either way, 33 is the most conservative number I saw. Add to that, the fact that the Vatican has one of the world’s most influential observatories, which is a super weird fact. You may not know that the Catholic church has actually invested their amount of time, money and just research into making sure we have better astronomical equipment and has run this with these brilliant priest scientists today. That’s just astronomy though because Galileo, but if you broaden that and say, what about other fields? You have fields like genetics, which was, oh, by the way, a field founded by a Catholic priest, Gregor Mendel, or you have Big bang cosmology. The Big Bang was proposed first by a Catholic priest. This is a Monsignor George Lemi, whose name I’m sure I’m butchering, Belgian Catholic priest and a contemporary and peer of Albert Einstein’s.

And this is nothing new though. You go back a ways a little bit of weird body trivia. There’s one part of the body named after a Catholic priest, and it’s a part of the body no Catholic priest has. It’s the fallopian tubes. The fallopian tubes are so named after the Catholic priest who discovered them. He’s an anatomist, oppe or fallopia depending on which language you do his name in. So the point is there’s this longstanding academic tradition where the church has not only embraced science, but in many cases invented entire fields of science and pioneered them. And not only that, but the grand irony of this is almost all of the major older universities are religious ones. Now in the US that was often Protestant universities like Harvard and Yale, but especially if you go into Europe and you look at the original universities, these were without exception founded by the Catholic church.

So in the encyclopedia, medieval science, technology and medicine, Michael Shank in the article on universities points out that when we talk about universities, there’s some dispute about one particular Moroccan madrasa, whether that should count as a university or not, because it was like an Islamic school of studies, but most people don’t count it. And so they’ll say the University of Paris, and it’s unusual in its founding in about the year 1200, some people put that slightly later, like 1208 to 1215 doesn’t matter. It’s clearly a medieval Catholic institution of higher learning. And significantly, when the bishop and the chancellor of the university would get into fights, the head of the university would appeal to the pope over the bishop’s head. And this helped create a sort of precedent where the Pope was actually fighting for academic freedom fr... Read more on Catholic.com