The Catholic Church teaches that Mary was without sin her entire life. She was conceived without any stain of original sin, and she remained free from personal sin thereafter. Jimmy Akin holds and teaches this. What happens when someone who’s new to the Faith thinks he understands a complex, technical matter and then tries to publicly shame someone who’s much more experienced? Let’s find out!
Transcript:
Coming Up
What happens when someone who’s new to the Faith thinks he understands a complex, technical matter and then tries to publicly shame someone who’s much more experienced?
Let’s find out!
Let Me Tell You a Story . . .
Let me tell you a story. A while back, an Evangelical YouTuber named T.J. McCarty asked if he could interview me, and in that interview, he asked me this question.
CLIP: QUESTION
Now, I make it a policy to answer every question I get straight. I give an honest and accurate answer—even if I don’t like the answer I have to give. I do not slant the answer to favor my personal views.
And I’ll tell you right now that I am firmly of the opinion that Mary was completely without any sin—original or personal—throughout her entire earthly life. And she’s still sinless today in her heavenly life. So Mary was and is absolutely sinless.
But if I’m asked what the Church’s teaching is, what level of authority it has, and whether there is any possibility a person who disagreed could be a Catholic, I’m going to give them a straight answer. So I said . . .
CLIP: ANSWER 1
Now, I would have preferred to just insist that TJ believe in Mary’s complete sinlessness throughout her entire existence, but he didn’t ask me what my personal preference was. So I gave him a straight answer.
TJ was very happy with the exchange and said
CLIP: ANSWER 3—CHECK AS CLOSELY
And I’m afraid that’s true. Many do not check the sources as closely as I do.
At this point, a new character enters our story, and his name is Christian B. Wagner. He goes by the handle WalmartThomist on X, and he runs a channel on YouTube called Scholastic Answers under the handle MilitantThomist.
You may not have heard of him, so I’ll give you a brief background. Wagner is a young man. Based on how he looks and the fact that he may still be in college, I’d guess he’s in his 20s, though I could be mistaken.
In terms of his educational background, the website for The North American Anglican says that he did his undergraduate studies at Reformation Bible College, and that for his graduate studies he’s been a student studying classical Protestantism at Davenant Hall.
He was pursuing the priesthood in the Gulf Atlantic Diocese of the Anglican Church in North America, but in October of 2021 he announced that he was going to become Catholic the next month, or November 2021.
So that means that—at the time of recording—he’s been a Catholic for exactly 36 months. Congratulations to Christian B. Wagner on three-years of being a Catholic!
Today, in addition to running his YouTube channel, Christian also runs a website where he offers “Meetings and Tutoring” as one of his services. If you click on that link, you can book between a one-time, 20-minute meeting with him or get up to a 1-hour monthly tutoring session with him. So that’s quite the level of self-confidence for someone who’s only been Catholic for three years!
By contrast, I’ve been Catholic for the last 32 years—which, from what I can tell, may be longer than Christian has been alive. Under the auspices of Catholic Answers—not on my own—I’ve also worked as a professional apologist for 31 years, which is almost 12 times as long as he’s been a Catholic.
And I’ve made an intensive study of ecclesiology and—among many other works—I’ve authored a theological manual called Teaching With Authority that deals specifically with the Magisterium and how to evaluate the status of Church teachings.
So, given those differentials, you might think that Christian would hesitate to try to publicly shame me. I mean, if he was concerned about something I had said, he might contact me privately and ask me about it. But nope! Without contacting me, Christian has tried to shame me in public!
After my interview with TJ, Christian published a video called “Jimmy Akin is a Problem.” It featured a thumbnail that had an alarmed looking screen grab of my face next to the words “Beyond Shameful”—which is clear hyperbole.
That’s because shame is a terminal category, which ends with the shame experienced by souls in hell. There isn’t anything that is literally “beyond shameful.” But it’s clear that, here, Christian is trying to publicly shame me.
Back on his channel, TJ took note of this:
CLIP: TJ—JIMMY AKIN IS A PROBLEM
Christian then published another video called “Jimmy Akin Cannot Use This Excuse,” which featured a thumbnail that again featured my face—this time with the words “A Huge Error.”
And then he published a video called “Legendary Theologian Weighs in Against Akin” with a thumbnail that reads “He—meaning me—is wrong.” This video covered the opinion of a well-known theologian—Robert Fastiggi, who I am friends with—that has a different view than I do.
Given this trajectory, some might say that Christian is punching above his weight in order to get views for his channel—as someone who’s only been Catholic for 3 years and is taking on someone with much more experience than him—but I’ll let that pass.
What’s clear is that he is trying to publicly shame me.
So, he’s got a lot of self-confidence!
Now, normally, I don’t respond to my online critics. Doing so is an endless time sink. But if someone tries to publicly shame me, I may publicly defend myself.
This is particularly the case when a person is at the beginning of their career as a Catholic and they need to learn a few lessons. In that case, I may respond in order to help them learn the lessons that they need to have under their belt for their future. In other words, I want to help them despite their attacks on me.
And that is the case here. Christian is a young man who has been a Catholic for only 3 years, and there are several things he needs to learn to set him on a good course for the future. So please, take what I say in this video as an attempt to help him, not hurt him.
Christian makes a bunch of mistakes in his videos about me, but they are more than two hours long, so I won’t be able to address all of them. I need to keep things focused, so I’ll only be hitting some of the main points.
I’ll play you some clips of what Christian said and then respond to them. By the way, you may notice that in these clips Christian doesn’t look at his camera very often. He normally looks to one side. Someone asked him about this, and under his MilitantThomist handle, he replied, “Autism. Can’t help it.” So he may also be dealing with autism.
In any event, he has two major criticisms that he makes. One concerns what is known as the doctrinal note to be attached to Mary’s perpetual sinlessness. Is it an infallible teaching or not? And the other was the statement that—if something is not infallible—there are circumstances in which, as an exceptional case, one could disagree with it.
The latter is a general principle that applies to a lot of different situations, so we’ll deal with that one first.
Disagreement with Noninfallible Teaching
Let’s hear the charges Christian makes on this subject.
CLIP: YOU DON’T HAVE TO BELIEVE IT
So here Christian represents me as saying that if something isn’t infallibly defined that you don’t have to believe it. No further qualifications on that. You just don’t have to believe it.
He does the same thing here.
CLIP: DON’T HAVE TO BELIEVE IT
So Christian accuses me of saying that for beliefs that require religious submission of intellect and will, “that basically means that they don’t have to believe it.”
CLIP: SOMETHING MISUNDERSTOOD BY JIMMY
So Christian says that I think that non-heretical things deserve no censure and involve no sin against the Faith.
CLIP: WILLY NILLY
So Christian represents me a saying that if something requires religious submission of intellect and will that you can deny it willy nilly without sin.
CLIP: YOU DON’T SIN
So again Christian represents me as saying that if something is noninfallible that you don’t sin against the Faith if you deny it.
To review: Christian has represented me as saying that if something is noninfallible that you don’t have to believe it—full stop, with no further qualifications. They can be denied willy nilly without sin.
He also represents me as saying that things that aren’t heretical don’t deserve any censure, and that they involve no sin against the Faith.
Now—as a reminder—here’s what I actually said:
CLIP: ANSWER 1-B
Notice that I didn’t say that you can just deny a noninfallible teaching without reason or “willy nilly” in Christian’s words. Instead, I said that if you had really good reasons you could hypothetically disagree as an exceptional case.
I loaded up on qualifiers that Christian completely ignored and thus misrepresented me.
Further, I didn’t say anything about non-heretical teachings not deserving any censure. In fact, there’s a whole series of censures shy of heresy for problematic teachings.
And I said nothing at all about one not sinning if you disagreed with a noninfallible teaching. If you don’t have the serious reasons for disagreement, you do sin.
So Christian has fundamentally misrepresented me, and this clip was just a short summary. Earlier in the video—when I was asked about the subject of disagreeing for the first time—I gave a fuller summary.
CLIP: ANSWER—EARLIER
So I didn’t say or imply anything like what Christian represented me doing. In both cases, I stressed needing to have very serious reasons before disagreeing with a noninfallible teaching. I said that—because of the divine guidance given to the Church in the overall exercise of its Magisterium—we need to presume that even noninfallible teaching are true, and that disagreement with them can only be on an exceptional basis.
So Christian flatly misrepresented me. He did so repeatedly, and he owes me an apology.
He owes me an even bigger apology for this . . .
CLIP: PEOPLE LIKE JIMMY AKIN
Dude! I did not say any of those things! In fact, I have strongly defended the infallibility of the teaching on the impossibility of women’s ordination to the priesthood for literally decades—perhaps longer than Christian has been alive.
So this is flat-out slander, by which I mean the civil crime of slander—saying false things about me in public.
In ecclesiastical terms, he has committed calumny. The Catechism states:
He becomes guilty . . . of calumny who, by remarks contrary to the truth, harms the reputation of others and gives occasion for false judgments concerning them (CCC 2477).
Christian, you just did that. In fact, you do so repeatedly throughout your videos.
Now, in this particular case, I can imagine how you might defend yourself. You might say, “Well, I was describing a general class of people; I wasn’t saying that Jimmy Akin himself makes the claims I just named.”
That may be what you meant, but it’s not what you said. You said that people like Jimmy Akin make these claims about the noninfallibility of things, including women’s ordination.
So—Christian—I’m doing you a favor here. You need to learn to watch what you say more carefully so that you don’t open yourself to civil liability for the crime of slander and commit calumny before God.
The Church on Disagreement with Noninfallible Teaching
Now, where was I getting the position I articulated on the hypothetical possibility of disagreeing with a noninfallible teaching?
It’s been recognized throughout Church history, and is—in fact—found in numerous manuals of theology. For example, in The Way of the Lord Jesus, Germain Grisez writes of a selection of older theological manuals:
All admit the possibility that one might not be obliged to assent to certain teachings—those neither defined nor proposed infallibly by the ordinary magisterium (The Way of the Lord Jesus, vol. 1, p. 873).
He also writes:
Even teachings which are not proposed infallibly must be accepted with religious assent; this obligation admits of exception only if there is some superior theological source for a contrary judgment (The Way of the Lord Jesus, vol. 1, p. 871).
So—as Grisez summarizes—it has been the standard Catholic position that one may—on an exceptional basis—disagree with a noninfallible teaching that ordinarily requires religious submission of intellect and will if one has sufficient theological reasons.
This position was articulated by the Church itself in a 1990 magisterial document known as Donum Veritatis, which was released by the then-Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. It stated:
The willingness to submit loyally to the teaching of the Magisterium on matters per se not irreformable [meaning, noninfallible] must be the rule. It can happen, however, that a theologian may, according to the case, raise questions regarding the timeliness, the form, or even the contents of magisterial interventions (Donum Veritatis 24).
So a theologian may raise questions about “even the contents” of magisterial texts—meaning, he may withhold assent from or disagree with them. The document goes on to state:
When it comes to the question of interventions in the prudential order, it could happen that some Magisterial documents might not be free from all deficiencies. Bishops and their advisors have not always taken into immediate consideration every aspect or the entire complexity of a question. But it would be contrary to the truth, if, proceeding from some particular cases, one were to conclude that the Church’s Magisterium can be habitually mistaken in its prudential judgments, or that it does not enjoy divine assistance in the integral exercise of its mission (Donum Veritatis 24).
So the document acknowledges that certain types of noninfallible statements may not be free from all deficiencies. However, it says it would be a mistake to take a few particular instances where this has happened and conclude that the Magisterium can be “habitually mistaken,” because it enjoys divine assistance in the integral or overall exercise of its mission.
Therefore—just as I said—any disagreement with a noninfallible teaching must be an exception. The rule is that noninfallible teachings still require religious submissions of intellect and will because of the guidance God gives his Church.
What, then, could motivate such a disagreement? Donum Veritatis continues:
Such a disagreement could not be justified if it were based solely upon the fact that the validity of the given teaching is not evident or upon the opinion that the opposite position would be the more probable. Nor, furthermore, would the judgment of the subjective conscience of the theologian justify it because conscience does not constitute an autonomous and exclusive authority for deciding the truth of a doctrine (Donum Veritatis 28).
It can also happen that at the conclusion of a serious study, undertaken with the desire to heed the Magisterium’s teaching without hesitation, the theologian’s difficulty remains because the arguments to the contrary seem more persuasive to him. Faced with a proposition to which he feels he cannot give his intellectual assent, the theologian nevertheless has the duty to remain open to a deeper examination of the question (Donum Veritatis 31).
So not just any reason for disagreeing is sufficient. You can’t disagree with a doctrine just because you don’t like it or have slight evidence against it. You need to do a serious study of it, and disagreement is warranted afterward if, “at the conclusion of a serious study,” “the arguments to the contrary seem more persuasive.” Thus my repeated emphasis on needing serious reasons to disagree.
So the Church itself acknowledges that one can disagree with noninfallible teachings for serious reasons on an exceptional basis, but not as a matter of personal whim or as a matter of course.
I found it interesting that—despite his criticism of me and the perfectly orthodox things I said on this subject—Christian and his guest Hassan went on to repeatedly justify disagreeing with noninfallible teachings by Pope Francis.
CLIP: NO TO FRANCIS
They also justified rejecting noninfallible teachings by Pope St. John Paul II. As Christian states in a follow up video:
CLIP: NO TO JP2
Hassan also acknowledged this:
CLIP: SERIOUS REASONS TO DIAGREE
They even tried to articulate one criterion that would justify such disagreement.
CLIP: OVERRULED BY A HIGHER AUTHORITY
So . . . you need serious reasons to disagree, like having a higher authority that says otherwise. Wow, you guys should be careful . . . because you’re sounding like Jimmy Akin.
In fact, in his follow up video, TJ himself noted:
CLIP: TJ—AGREEING THE WHOLE TIME
That’s what it sounds like to me!
It sounds like Christian and Hassan didn’t listen to me closely enough to understand what I was saying, and then they rushed out a video in which they falsely characterized me as saying that you just don’t have to believe noninfallible teachings, that you can deny them willy nilly, and that non-heretical things deserve no censure and involve no sin against faith.
When I didn’t say any of those things. No do I believe them.
Then, confronted with the issue of problematic noninfallible statements by their commenters, they then spent a lot of time justifying exactly such disagreements and inarticulately trying to express the circumstances under which they are justified.
Frankly, I did it more clearly than they did, and in line with Donum Veritatis.
So Christian, I’m trying to do you a favor. Do not do a half-baked job listening to what someone says and then start shooting off your mouth in public so that you completely misrepresent what they said—committing slander and calumny—and then end up agreeing with what they said yourself.
Mary Is Absolutely Sinless
Now let’s turn to the second issue where they took exception with me, which has to do with Mary’s sinlessness.
Allow me to state for the record that I am firmly of the view that she is perpetually free of all sin—both original and personal.
From the first moment of her conception, by a special privilege of God, the Blessed Virgin Mary was free from all stain of original sin. That was infallibly taught in 1854 as a dogma of the Faith by Bl. Pope Pius IX in his apostolic constitution Ineffibilis Deus.
Furthermore, the Church teaches that she remained free from all personal sin subsequent to her conception. I could cite numerous sources on this, but I will cite just one. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states:
The Fathers of the Eastern tradition call the Mother of God “the All-Holy” (Panagia) and celebrate her as “free from any stain of sin, as though fashioned by the Holy Spirit and formed as a new creature.” By the grace of God Mary remained free of every personal sin her whole life long (CCC 493).
That’s what the Church teaches, and that’s what I believe.
That’s why I titled this video “Mary Was Absolutely Sinless.” She had no sin—of any kind—at any point in her life.
What the core of the disagreement on this point is is limited to the doctrinal note that should be assigned to the teaching. For those who may not be familiar, doctrinal notes are assessments given—usually by theologians—to what they consider the precise level of authority a teaching has.
There are different systems of doctrinal notes used by different theologians, but one of the distinctions is between those teachings that are infallible and those that aren’t. That’s all that’s being disputed here—what is the precise doctrinal note to be assigned to this teaching? The teaching itself is not under dispute. We both agree on the teaching; all that is in question is the doctrinal note it is to be assigned.
I firmly agree that Mary is perpetually sinless, and I agree that the Church teaches this. In fact, I hold that the Church has taught this in a very, very authoritative manner.
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith holds that, in assessing the weight of a teaching, we need to look at three factors: the nature of the documents it appears in, the frequency with which it is repeated, and the language used to express it. On all three fronts, Mary’s perpetual sinlessness is taught in a highly authoritative manner.
The question is whether it is highly authoritative or whether it is infallible, and the Church has specific rules for determining the latter, as I wrote about in Teaching With Authority and as we’ll get into.
But I wholeheartedly affirm this highly authoritative and logical teaching. There should be no doubt about any of that.
Unfortunately, by falsely stating that I claim you can just deny Mary’s sinlessness, “willy nilly,” without censure and without sin, Christian B. Wagner has misled a bunch of people about what I believe, and I’ve been hearing from them.
Some have even been led to think that I deny the sinlessness of Mary.
For example, I recently did an interview on Cameron Bertuzzi’s Capturing Christianity channel—on a completely different topic—yet in the combox one user wrote:
Why aren’t more people freaking out about Jimmy Akin denying the sinlessness of the Blessed Virgin Mary?
This kind of confusion is due to Christian’s misrepresentation of me. He made it appear that I was totally fine with people denying Mary’s ongoing sinlessness—as if there were no restrictions on any potential disagreement—and that led people like this gentleman to think that I actually denied it.
And I know this individual is not a troll, because I corrected him, he apologized, I accepted it, and he wrote:
I admire your magnanimity. I’ll try to emulate it, @JimmyAkin.
But this kind of misunderstanding is predictable if you produce an inflammatory “Beyond Shameful”-themed video and don’t stress the other person’s actual position, so Christian is responsible for the confusion he has caused people.
Church Teaching on Infallibility
Now let’s look at what the Church actually teaches regarding Mary’s ongoing sinlessness.
Our starting point is canon 749 of the Code of Canon Law. It says:
Can. 749 §1. By virtue of his office, the Supreme Pontiff possesses infallibility in teaching when as the supreme pastor and teacher of all the Christian faithful, who strengthens his brothers and sisters in the faith, he proclaims by definitive act that a doctrine of faith or morals is to be held.
So the Pope is infallible when he teaches a matter of faith and morals “by definitive act.” This happens when the pope speaks ex cathedra.
- 2. The college of bishops also possesses infallibility in teaching when the bishops gathered together in an ecumenical council exercise the magisterium as teachers and judges of faith and morals who declare for the universal Church that a doctrine of faith or morals is to be held definitively;
So the bishops also teach infallibly when they are gathered into an ecumenical council and teach that a matter of faith and morals “is to be held definitively.”
Section 2 of the canon goes on to say:
[The college of bishops also possesses infallibility in teaching] when dispersed throughout the world but preserving the bond of communion among themselves and with the successor of Peter and teaching authentically together with the Roman Pontiff matters of faith or m... Read more on Catholic.com