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Chapter 16 Dialogue
151. Dialogue and discussionism in the post-conciliar Church. Dialogue in Ecclesiam Suam. The word dialogue represents the biggest change in the mentality of the Church after the council, only comparable in its importance with the change wrought by the word liberty in the last century. The word was completely unknown and unused in the Church’s teaching before the council. It does not occur once in any previous council, or in papal encyclicals, or in sermons or in pastoral practice. In the Vatican II documents it occurs 28 times, twelve of them in the decree on ecumenism Unitatis Redintegratio. Nonetheless, through its lightning spread and an enormous broadening in meaning, this word, which is very new in the Catholic Church, became the master-word determining post-conciliar thinking, and a catch-all category in the newfangled mentality.1 People not only talk about ecumenical dialogue, dialogue between the Church and the world, ecclesial dialogue, but by an enormous catachresis, a dialogical structure is attributed to theology, pedagogy, catechesis, the Trinity, the history of salvation, schools, families, the priesthood, the sacraments, redemption, and to everything else that had existed in the Church for centuries without the concept being in anybody’s mind or the word occurring in the language. The movement from a thetic manner of talking, which was appropriate to religion, to a hypothetic and problematic style, is apparent even in the titles of books, which used to teach, but now enquire. Books that were called Institutiones or “manuals” or “treatises” on philosophy, theology or any other science have been replaced by “Problems in philosophy,” “Problems in theology,” and manuals are abhorred and despised precisely because of their positive and apodictic nature. It has happened in all areas: no more nurses’ manuals, but problems in nursing; not drivers’ manuals but drivers’ problems and so on, with everything moving from the certain to the uncertain, the positive to the problematic. It is a decline from an intentional appropriation of real objects by means of knowledge (signified by the syllable no in nosco, I know) to a simple throwing of the object before the mind (prohallo in Greek, from which we get problem). In August 1964, devoting a third of his first encyclical Ecclesiam Suam to dialogue, Paul VI equated the Church’s duty to evangelize the world with a duty to dialogue with the world. But one cannot help noticing that the equation is supported neither by Scripture nor the dictionary. The word dialogue never occurs in Scripture and its Latin equivalent colloquium is only used in the sense of a meeting between chief persons and of a conversation, never in the modern sense of a group meeting. Colloquium on three occasions in the New Testament means a dispute. Evangelization is a proclamation not a dispute or a conversation. The evangelization the Apostles are commanded to undertake in the Gospel is immediately identified with teaching. The very word angelos carries the idea of something that is given to be announced, not something thrown into dispute. It is true that Peter and Paul dispute in the synagogues, but it is not a question of dialoguing in the modern sense of a dialogue in search of something, setting out from a position of ostensible ignorance, but rather a dialogue in refutation of errors. The possibility of dialogue disappears, in their case, the moment the disputant is no longer open to persuasion, whether through his obstinacy or his incapacity. This can be seen, for example, in St. Paul’s refusal of dialogue on one occasion.2 Just as Christ spoke with authority: Erat docens eos sicut potestatem hahens,3 the Apostles preached the Gospel in an authoritative manner, not looking to validate it by dialogue. In the same place Christ’s positive way of teaching is contrasted with the dialogues of the scribes and pharisees. The heart of the matter is that the Church’s message is not a human product, always open to argument, but a revealed message designed to be accepted rather than argued about. After having equated evangelization with dialogue, Ecclesiam Suam denies that evangelization, or preaching the truth, means condemning error, and it identifies condemnations with coercion. The theme of the council’s opening speech thus returns.4 “Our mission,” the encyclical says, “is to announce truths that are undeniable and necessary to salvation; it will not come armed with external coercion, but with the legitimate means of human education.” This is a legitimate and traditional manner of approach, as was proved by the fact that immediately after the encyclical’s publication, Wisser’t Hooft, the Secretary of the World Council of Churches, hastened to state that the Pope’s ideal of dialogue as a communication of truth without a reciprocal reply, was not in accordance with ecumenical ideas.5 1.
In the Osservatore Romano of 15 March 1971,
Cardinal Roy said dialogue was a new experience for the Church and
for the world. On 15-16 November 1966, on the other hand, the Osservatore
said that the Church had always practiced dialogue (mixing it up
with controversy and refutation of other arguments) and that if
there had been times when it did not practice it, “they were
more or less depressed periods.” The new fangled dialogue is based on “the perpetual problematicity of the Christian subject,” as the Osservatore Romano puts it,6 that is, on the impossibility of ever getting to anything that is not itself problematic. In short it denies the old principle, recognized in logic, metaphysics and morality, that anagke stenai.7 Dialogue first runs into trouble when it is made to coincide with the Church’s universal task of evangelization and heralded as a means of spreading truth. It is impossible for everyone to dialogue. The possibility of holding a dialogue depends on the knowledge one has of a subject, and not, as is alleged, on the fact of one’s liberty or the dignity of one’s soul. The right to argue depends on knowledge, not on man’s general ordering towards the truth. Socrates said that on matters of gymnastics, one should consult an expert in gymnastics, on horses an expert on things equine, on wounds and diseases an expert in medicine and on the running of society an expert in politics. Expertise is a result of effort and study, of reflecting on things methodically and steadily rather than nastily and extempore. Contemporary dialogue presupposes, however, that any man is capable of dialoguing with anyone else on any subject, simply in virtue of being a rational creature. The demand is therefore made that the life of the temporal community and the Church should be arranged so that everyone can participate; not as the Catholic system envisages, by each person contributing his knowledge and playing his own proper part, but by everybody giving his opinion and deciding on everything. The paradox is that this right to argue is being extended to everyone at the very moment when the knowledge that gives an authentic title to join the argument is getting scarcer and feebler even among the Church’s teachers. The next blunder relates to the onus of proof. It is assumed that dialogue can and should satisfy all the objections of an opponent. Now for one man to offer himself to another with the aim of giving him complete intellectual satisfaction on any point of religion is a sign of a moral failing. It is rash for somebody who has asserted a truth to proceed to expose himself to a general, extempore and unlimited discussion. Every subject has many facets; he is familiar with only some, or even one of them. Yet he exposes himself as if he were ready for every objection, impossible to catch off guard, and as if he had anticipated every possible thought that could arise on the matter. Dialogue labors under yet another difficulty from the side of the inquirer, because it rests on a gratuitous presupposition that St. Augustine perceptively detected in his day. An intellect can be capable of formulating an objection without being capable of understanding the argument that meets the objection. This fact, that an individual’s intellectual strength may be greater in raising objections than in understanding replies, is a common cause of error. Ecce unde plerumque convalescit error, cum homines idonei sunt his rebus interrogandis quihus intelligendis non sunt idonei.8 This disproportion between an intellect’s asking a question and understanding a reply is a result of the general difference between potency and act. Refusal to recognize this difference leads to an illogical conclusion in politics: everyone has by nature a capacity to be able to rule, therefore everyone can rule. It also leads to the illogicality implicit in dialogue: everyone has by nature a capacity to know the truth, therefore everyone actually knows the truth. In the first book of his Theodicy, Antonio Rosmini also teaches that an individual should not trust his own intellectual powers to solve the questions that arise regarding the workings of divine Providence: no individual can be certain that his own intellectual strength is up to meeting all the objections that might face it. This uncertainty as to a person’s intellectual capacities is what Descartes ignored in his method, when he imagined that the power of reason was equally strong and equally exercisable in each individual. 6.
O.K., 15 January 1971. 153. Appropriateness of dialogue. In Scripture, evangelization proceeds by teaching not by dialogue. Christ’s last command to his disciples was matheteuein and didaskein, which literally means make disciples of all men, rather as if the Apostles’ task consisted in leading the nations to the condition of listeners and disciples, with matheteuein as a preliminary grade of didaskein, to teach.9 Besides lacking a biblical foundation, dialogue is also void of a gnoseological one, because the nature of dialogue is incompatible with a line of argument based on faith. It assumes that the credibility of religion depends on a prior resolution of every particular objection made to it. Now that cannot be had, and cannot be made a precondition for an assent of faith. The correct order is the other way around. Having established even by one convincing consideration that religion is true, the latter is to be held on to even if particular difficulties remain unresolved. As Rosmini teaches,10 the proposition “the Catholic religion is true” means that there are a great many possible objections that could be raised against it. But it is not necessary to have previously resolved the 15,000 objections in the Summa Theologica before one can reasonably assent to Catholicism. Its truth is, in short, not to be garnered synthetically, as a compound of particular truths, and does not imply that entire intellectual satisfaction necessarily accompanies its acceptance; in fact it is assent to that overall truth that leads one on to the particular assents that follow. Lastly it should be noted that the present idea of dialogue obscures the way of useful ignorance that is appropriate for minds that are incapable of adopting the way of examination, and that adhere firmly to their fundamental assent and do not devote much attention to opposing views, to find out where their error lies. Being afraid of ideas opposed to what they know is certainly true, they keep themselves in ignorance to preserve the truths they already possess, and shut out false ideas and also any true ones that happen to be mixed in with them, without separating the one from the other. This way of useful ignorance is legitimate in Catholicism, is based on the theoretical principle explained earlier, and is moreover the condition in which the great majority of all religious believers find themselves.11 It is therefore untrue to say as the Osservatore Romano does that “anyone who refuses dialogue is a fanatic, an intolerant person who always ends up being unfaithful to himself and then to the society of which he is part. Anyone who does dialogue gives up isolation and condemnations.”12 To dialogue unconditionally in all circumstances is a sign of rashness, and of the fanaticism that replaces the objective force of truth by one’s own subjective capacities. 9.
In his commentary on Matthew, Paris 1927,
p.144, Lagrange translates the first word by enseigner and
the second by apprendre. 154. The end of dialogue. Paul VI. The Secretariat for Non-Believers. The difference between the old and new sorts of dialogue can be seen very clearly in the ends assigned to them. The new sort, some say, is not directed towads the refuting of error or the converting of one’s interlocutor.13 The new fashioned mentality abhors anything polemical, holding it to be incompatible with charity even though it be in reality an act of charity. The idea of polemics is inseparable from the opposition between truth and falsehood. A polemic is aimed precisely at overthrowing any pretended equality between the two. Thus polemic is connatural to thought, since it removes errors in one’s own thinking even when it fails to persuade an opponent. From the Catholic’s point of view, the end of dialogue cannot be heuristic, since he is in possession of religious truth, not in search of it. Nor can it be eristic, that is, aimed at winning the argument for its own sake, since its motive and goal is charity. True dialogue is aimed at demonstrating a truth, at producing a conviction in another person, and ultimately at conversion. This was clearly taught by Paul VI in his speech of 27 June 1968: “It is not enough to draw close to others, to talk to them, to assure them of our trust and to seek their good. One must also take steps to convert them. One must preach to get them to come back. One must try to incorporate them into the divine plan, that is one and unique.” This is a very important papal utterance, because the Pope was expressly talking about ecumenical dialogue; its importance was confirmed by the fact that the Osservatore Romano even printed it in a different type, a unique event. That notwithstanding, in 1975 the head of the Secretariat for Non-Believers made the following diametrically opposite assertion: “The Secretariat was certainly not created with the intention of proselytizing among non-believers, even if that word is understood in a positive sense; nor with an apologetic intent but rather with the, aim of promoting dialogue between believers and unbelievers.”14 When I objected to the author that his text contradicted Pope Paul’s assertion, he replied15 that the Secretariat does nothing without the agreement of higher authority and that the particular article had been seen by the Secretariat of State prior to publication. The letter simply makes the difference between the Pope and the Secretariat for Non-Believers all the more obvious. As to my specific objection, the letter answered that although the Church had the task of converting the world “that does not imply that every step and every organization in the Church is specifically aimed at converting one’s interlocutor.” This answer lacks clarity. The Church has a single all-embracing goal which is human salvation, and everything it does is one particular expression of that goal: when it teaches, it teaches not baptizes; when it baptizes, it baptizes not teaches; when it consecrates the Eucharist it consecrates not absolves, and so on. But all these specific ends are precisely specifications and actuations of the all-embracing goal, and all of them are aimed at turning man towards God, that is at conversion. It is this ultimate end that gives direction to all the Church’s subordinate goals, and without it none of the lesser goals would be pursued.16 The statement by Paul VI we have quoted asserts unequivocally that dialogue is aimed at conversion. 13.
See the Istruzione per il dialogo published
on 28 August 1968 by the Secretariat for Non-Believers. 155. Whether dialogue is always an enrichment. De facto, conversion and apologetics have been excluded from post-conciliar dialogue which is said to be “always a positive exchange”; but that assertion is difficult to accept. Firstly, as well as a dialogue that converts there is a dialogue that perverts, by which one party is detached from the truth and led into error. Or will it be pretended that truth is always efficacious and that error never is? Secondly, there is the situation where instead of helping the participants, dialogue presents them with an impossible task. St. Thomas envisages the case in which it is impossible to prove the truth to the person one is addressing because there is no jointly held principle on which to base the argument. All that can then be done is to prove that the opponent’s arguments are not conclusive and that his objections can be met. In such circumstances, it is not true that dialogue has a positive outcome for both parties and constitutes a mutual enrichment. The dialogue is unproductive. If its usefulness is then alleged to lie in getting to know the psychology and ideology of one’s partner, the answer is that such things are the province of psychology, and are not the goal of a religious dialogue; they belong to history, biography or sociology. Such knowledge can indeed be useful in adjusting the dialogue in a manner more appropriate to the participants, but that is not the same thing as being a mutual enrichment. The aim of Catholic dialogue is persuasion and, at a higher level, conversion of the other party. Bishop Marafmi says “the method of dialogue is understood as a movement converging towards the fullness of truth and a search for deep unity,” but it is not quite clear what he means.17 There is a tendency to confuse dialogue on natural matters with dialogue concerning supernatural faith. The former is carried on by the light of the reason that all men have in common. Everyone is equal under that light, and above their dialogue, as we have said,18 they can sense a more important Logos that makes them realize they are brothers, profoundly united by their common nature. But in dialogue about the faith, the two parties cannot converge towards the truth or put themselves on a par. The non-believer rejects or doubts in a way the believer cannot. It might be objected that the believer adopts a process of methodic doubt, analogous to Descartes’: the believer adopts an unbelieving position only for the purposes of dialogue. But the difficulty returns: if the doubt or rejection of faith is real, it implies a loss of faith and a sin on the part of the believer. If it is hypothetical or feigned, the dialogue is flawed by a pretense and rests on an immoral basis. There is also the question of whether someone who pretends not to believe what in fact he does, is not sinning against faith, and whether a dialogue based on pretense is not bound to be unproductive as well as wrong. It has been claimed19 that dialogue is fruitful for the believer’s faith, quite apart from being an act of charity. But there is a clear contradiction involved. The article presents a dilemma that “if the Lord Jesus one knows is not the supreme and totalizing truth for man...one will have something other and greater to learn than what one has received by grace.” And if on the other hand Christ is that supreme and totalizing truth “one cannot see how an idea or an experience can be added to him.” But then the author casts his dilemma aside and says the believer does in fact gain something to add to his faith by the dialogue “on condition that these new acquisitions are not seen as additions to Christ. They are simply facets, dimensions, aspects of the mystery of Christ which the believer already possesses but discovers thanks to the stimulus of those who, though not Christians consciously, are Christians in concrete fact.” This is to say that an addition to knowledge is not an addition to knowledge; that an atheist is an implicit Christian,20 and that the atheist possesses facets of the Christian mystery which the explicit Christian does not know but which the atheist will suggest to him. We may conclude by saying that the new sort of dialogue is not Catholic. Firstly, because it has a purely heuristic function, as if the Church in dialogue did not possess the truth and were looking for it, or as if it could prescind from possessing the truth as long as the dialogue lasted. Secondly, because it does not recognize the superior authority of revealed truth, as if there were no longer any distinction in importance between nature and revelation. Thirdly, because it imagines the parties to dialogue are on an equal footing, albeit a merely methodological equality, as if it were not a sin against faith to waive the advantage that comes from divine truth, even as a dialectical ploy. Fourthly, because it postulates that every human philosophical position is unendingly debatable, as if there were not fundamental points of contradiction sufficient to stop a dialogue and leave room only for refutation. Fifthly, because it supposes that dialogue is always fruitful and that “nobody has to sacrifice anything,”21 as if dialogue could never be corrupting and lead to the uprooting of truth and the implanting of error, and as if nobody had to reject any errors they had previously professed. Dialogue converging towards a higher and more universal truth does not suit the Catholic Church, because an heuristic process putting the Church on the road to truth does not suit it; what is appropriate for the Church is the act of charity, whereby a truth possessed by grace is communicated to others and they are thereby drawn to that truth, not to the Church as an end in itself. The superiority here is not that of the believer over the non-believer, but of truth over all parties in dialogue. It should not be thought that the act of one man persuading another of the truth is tantamount to an act of oppression or an attack on the other’s freedom. Logical contradiction and an “either or” are part of the structure of reality, not a kind of violence. The sociological effect of Pyrrhonism, and the discussionism that follows from it, can be seen in the flood of conventions, meetings, commissions and congresses that began with Vatican II. It has also caused the current tendency to regard everything as problematic and to refer all such problems to committees, so that the responsibility that used to be personal and individual has been dispersed within collegial bodies. Discussionism has developed a whole technique of its own; in Rome in 1972 there was a convention of moderators of dialogues, which was designed to train the moderators, as if one could direct a dialogue in general, without any specific knowledge of what the dialogue were about. 17.
O.R., 18 December 1971. Cardinal Konig said
when presenting the Instruction on dialogue to the press that: “Dialogue
puts the partners on an equal footing. The Catholic is not considered
as possessing all the truth, but as someone who has faith and is
looking for that truth with others, both believers and non-believers.”
I.C.I., No.322, 15 October 1968, p.20.
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