[If you haven’t already, we recommend reading the previous post in this series.]
The Protecting Veil publication of Whelton’s book goes off the rails at the start. In the opening pages, readers are presented with a lovely image of “St. Peter’s Basilica on the Tiber River.” The only problem is that the Basilica is absent from the picture. That, of course, is the publisher’s mistake, not Whelton’s. Whether this error is indicative of the rest of the book, I leave for the reader to judge when our series is complete.
We return to our task with four criticisms of his Introduction, entitled "An Insistent Call".
1. Selective reasoning
Whelton's book exhibits a bias characterized by selective reasoning. He routinely criticizes the Catholic Church for certain actions or statements, even though his criticism, if valid, would equally apply to his own view of the church. For instance, he offers the following suggestive statement:
It may come as a surprise to some Catholics that before [Vatican I defined papal supremacy and infallibility] in 1870, many of the church’s most respected historians roundly denounced [those claims] as untenable.
For argument’s sake, let’s grant his assertion that many of the church’s most respected historians roundly denounced the definitions. Ironically, Whelton unwittingly proved its irrelevance, when several paragraphs earlier he writes:
Some of our Roman Catholic friends attempted to persuade us to remain with Rome by appealing to Rome’s numerical superiority, “but how can one billion Roman Catholics be wrong?” This line of reasoning, however, was justly condemned by Pope Pius IX in his Syllabus of Errors: “To one who says, ‘Authority is nothing else but numbers and the sum total of material strength,’ let him be anathema.”
A church council, like truth generally, is not subject to majority opinion, even that of historians. If a council is valid, its rulings are definitive and irreformable, regardless of whether or how many scholars dispute its judgments. If it is invalid, then its judgments have no binding force because of its invalidity, not from a lack of consensus among the scholars of its time.
Before defining the Trinitarian doctrine at Nicea in 325 AD, many of the church’s most respected bishops and theologians were Arian and thus roundly rejected it. Whelton would rightfully deny that this provides any warrant to call the Council or its verdicts into question. St. Vincent of Lerins would agree, as would any other patristic. In this way, Whelton displays a double standard or selective outrage against Vatican I.
2. Misinterpreting Cardinal Manning, hypocritically objecting to Leo XIII
Following the autobiographical section of his introduction, Whelton summarizes the conclusions that led him away from the Catholic echo chamber and into the greener pastures of an Eastern Orthodox church. In a passage written with his usual air of condescension, Whelton asserts:
Like most Roman Catholics our view of the church was more picturesque than real… Only Roman Catholic historians have a pure line to objectivity, especially when it concerns articles of faith. This is what Catholics are taught and it is this belief that will keep their faith inviolate.
He is welcome to speak for himself. However, it is incorrect to suggest that Catholicism attempts to shield its adherents from exposure to objective history, fearing that they might recognize the lack of evidence for the definitions of Vatican I and abandon ship. Attempting to enlist Pope Leo XIII and Cardinal Henry Manning in defense of his claim, he writes:
This teaching is best exemplified by Pope Leo XIII in his celebrated Letter to the Prelates and Clergy of France. While encouraging them to the study of history, he reminds: “Those who study it must never lose sight of the fact that it contains a collection of dogmatic facts, which impose themselves upon our faith, and which nobody is ever permitted to call in doubt.” Cardinal Manning of England is even more blunt: “The appeal to antiquity is both a treason and a heresy. It is a treason because it rejects the divine voice of the Church at this hour, and a heresy because it denies that voice to be divine.”
Had Whelton read the entire context of the Manning quotation, he would have seen that he had misunderstood the Cardinal's point. Manning was addressing Protestants who search history for arguments against what the Church has already authoritatively defined, emphasizing our obligation to interpret antiquity through the Church—similar to the Christian duty of interpreting the Old Testament in light of Christ in the New Testament.
Here we find another example of selective reasoning. Since Whelton's Orthodox Church maintains at least one dogmatic fact defined by prior councils, he is himself committed to the statements he criticizes. Otherwise, he would be compelled to believe that every doctrine is, in principle, open to being overturned by appeals to antiquity.
In another twist of fate, we see that with respect to doctrines like the Trinity or the two natures of Christ, Whelton would concur with Leo that these are
dogmatic facts, which impose themselves upon our faith, and which nobody is ever permitted to call in doubt.
Additionally, he would affirm with Manning that appeals to antiquity against the Church's definitions of those doctrines constitute both "treason and heresy."
3. Only “the best” scholarship
Whelton says that he has tried
to rely on the best scholarship available on early Church history to illustrate Rome’s role in the early Church, specifically in the ecumenical councils and how she was perceived by the Church at large. Also, I have relied heavily on Roman Catholic historians as they comment on the major issues such as papal infallibility.
I am willing to grant that he tried, but trying is not succeeding. To his credit, he references Dom John Chapman, OSB, who is an excellent Catholic source. However, he selectively cites Chapman when it supports his position, omitting any aspects where Chapman has expressed views contrary to Whelton’s.
Additionally, he prefers to rely on Gallican and liberal Catholics more frequently than Catholics with opposing views. For example, appealing to a debunked survey compiled by the French Gallican theologian Jean de Launoy, Whelton asserts that only
17 Fathers thought of the rock as Peter [in Matthew 16:18-19], 44 thought it referred to Peter’s confession, 16 thought Christ himself was the rock, while eight thought the rock represented all the Apostles; i.e., 80% of the Fathers did not recognize the person of Peter as the rock.
I covered Whelton’s claims regarding Peter and the rock in my previous post. There, I showed (among other things) how Whelton fallaciously infers that “80% of the Fathers did not recognize Peter has the rock”. Here, we are concerned specifically with his reliance on Launoy to provide the basis for that inference. We find three problems.
First, Joseph Crehan, S.J., scrutinized the Launoy results and found that medieval and Renaissance writers were included to inflate the number of witnesses against the interpretation of Peter as the rock.1
Second, Launoy’s survey yielded lists of authors who supposedly held (exclusively) that the rock was Peter, the apostolic college, Christ, or Peter's confession of faith. However, Fr. Crehan discovered that several patristic authors, including Jerome, Augustine, and Theodoret, appear in three of Launoy's lists, thus rendering the survey useless as evidence against the Catholic interpretation of Matthew 16:18-19. Those authors clearly did not intend to exclude Peter as the rock by also emphasizing Christ or Peter’s confession of faith, since in other places they explicitly refer to Peter as the rock. Again, this matter has been thoroughly addressed in Part 3.
Third, if Whelton sought the most credible Catholic scholarship, why would he accept Launoy's findings and not, for instance, those of Fr. Paul Bottalla, S.J., who documented 27 patristic authors affirming Peter as the rock and even stopped counting after 500 AD?2
Evidently, despite his boast, Whelton's sourcing is biased and riddled with gaps.
4. The infamous Canon 34
Vatican I includes the statement that certain definitions of the Roman Pontiff
are of themselves, and not by the consent of the Church, irreformable. [emphasis mine]
Whelton casually appeals to an ancient canon, Apostolic Canon 34 (fourth century), to suggest that it conflicts with Vatican I. The canon reads:
The bishops of every nation (ethnos) must acknowledge him who is first among them and account him as their head, and do nothing of consequence without his consent; but each may do those things only which concern his own parish, and the country places which belong to it. But neither let him (who is the first) do anything without the consent of all; for so there will be unanimity, and God will be glorified through the Lord in the Holy Spirit. [emphasis mine]
Whelton concludes:
The local church with its bishop contains the totality of the universal Church. This model is far removed from the Roman Catholic concept, whereby the local church is Catholic only because it is a segment of a greater corporate body and where the glory of the universal church is spotlighted with glaring intensity on the office of one bishop. Hence, Pope Pius IX could exclaim, “Witness of tradition, there is only one; that’s me.” In fact, the Church of the seven ecumenical councils called for an equilibrium that we find in Canon 34 of the Apostolic Canons.
We may dismiss his caricature about the “glaring intensity on the office of one bishop”: quod affirmatur, gratis negatur. Regarding the quote attributed to Pope Pius IX, Whelton mentions that it comes from the diaries of two bishops but provides no context for the remark. This renders it hearsay, serving more as gossip than evidence for anything consequential.
More importantly, Whelton assumes that in Canon 34 the first see or head refers (or perhaps logically applies) to the Bishop of Rome, while it actually refers to the metropolitan bishop of a region and his disciplinary relation to bishops underneath him. This blunts Whelton’s appeal to the canon, as it provides nothing of consequence for the claims of Vatican I concerning the Bishop of Rome as Head of the universal Church.
Canon 9 of the Synod of Antioch (341 AD) cites Canon 34 and explicitly refers to metropolitan bishops, which is more evidence that Canon 34 isn’t referring or applying to the bishop of Rome as Head. Edward Giles, an Anglican scholar, provides insight into both canons:
The ninth canon of the synod of Antioch (held probably within a year or two of Nicaea) covers the same ground [as Canon 34], and makes it clear that the head bishop of the province is he who presides in the civil capital of that province.3 [emphasis mine]
This view is also taken by the late Eastern Orthodox Canonist Alexander Bogolepov.4
Conclusion
These four instances of error are indicative of the type of tactics Whelton employs throughout the book. They testify to the Brownson and Horne quotations provided at the outset of our series.
In the next post, we will address Whelton’s assertions about St. Augustine and also the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15.
"Peter the dispenser", Vom Wort des Lebens: Festschrift für Max Meinertz, ed. Nikolaus Adler (Münster: Aschendorff, 1950), pp. 60-61.
The Pope And The Church: Considered In Their Mutual Relations, With Reference To The Errors Of The High Church Party In English; Part I, The Supreme Authority Of The Pope (London: Burnes & Oates, 1868), page 34.
Documents Illustrating Papal Authority: AD 96-454, ed. E. Giles (London: S.P.C.K, 1952), page 93.
See his book Toward an American Orthodox Church: The Establishment of an Autocephalous Church (St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press: 2001), page 18. I owe this source to Erick Ybarra.