Trying to Fly with One Wing, Part 13: Equivocation

The feedback and comments that I get on my logic series ("Trying to Fly with One Wing") are beneficial. They tell how well or how badly my attempts at getting people to think critically are working. Sometimes I'm encouraged, and other times I'm saddened at my ability to communicate. When I'm corrected, it hits hard at first; but then the correction, if heeded, will only accelerate my humility — of which I am quite proud. I think.

The Beauty of Humiliation

To explain how correction is a beautiful thing, I'm reminded of a story about the late Fr. John Hardon, S.J.. During the last years of his life, I was in a lay order and one of our members was Marie Coules, Fr. Hardon's secretary. Marie has a bunch of kids, as you'd expect if the Rev. John Hardon was going to let her be his secretary. One of Marie's little boys wanted to be Fr. Hardon's altar server at the daily Mass they attended, but he was too young. So, mom told the tike that he should wait until he's older — because if he made a mistake Fr. Hardon would humiliate him in the middle of Mass by correcting the boy. The boy wasn't exactly sure what that meant, so she explained.

Finally the day arrived when the boy was old enough to be Fr. Hardon's altar server — barely. He was filled with excitement — so much so that mom felt she had to calm him down. He was acting as if it was Christmas morning and he just knew that a new bike was waiting for him under the tree.  "Calm down son, why are you so excited?"

The boy looked at his mom astonished. "I'm going to serve Mass with Fr. Hardon." 

The boy was not old enough to know how revered Fr. Hardon was, so his mom pressed, "It is an honor to serve at any Mass." The boy interrupted, "But this is Fr. Hardon!"

"So what?" mom asked.

"So what! Mother, it was you who told me."

"What?"

"That he would humiliate me."

Marie raised up, speechless and looked strangely at her son as if he was the craziest person she had ever met. The boy saw the bewilderment on his mom's face.

"Mom. Get a grip. Don't you remember what you also told me?"

Mom slowly shook her head.

"That the fastest way to be holy is to be humbled. I figure Fr. Hardon is going to make me real holy, real fast."

Commenting on the Comments

I am disappointed when reader comments on the series explore the ins and outs of the anecdotes and not the central issue of logic the article raises. I suppose that is to be expected. At times the comments commit so many other fallacies (leading to a host of wrong conclusions) that I become disillusioned and want to give up. Then I rally and feel obligated to comment on the comments, but wonder how my readers could stand it. I don't mind sounding defensive because it is truth I'm defending here, and not some fanciful bully pulpit. Such is now the case.

Revisiting Campus Crusade for Christ

In Part 11, I wrote about a fallacy called Appeal to Personal Circumstances, and out of my personal experiences told some stories about the Evangelical organization Campus Crusade for Christ (CCC — not to be confused with the Catechism of the Catholic Church). What follows are a series of comments from a READER to that article and MY RESPONSE. I trust this will be instructive. (The underlined emphases are mine.)

A Reader's Personal Experiences with Campus Crusade

THE READER: My own experience with CCC led me OUT of the Catholic Church, as it had… many other Catholics I knew in our CCC chapter… Unfortunately, many too many of my CCC friends who had been cradle Catholics not properly catechized, as I had not been, have not returned to the Catholic Church… I have very mixed feelings about its most usually anti-Catholic work, and pray and hope that my kids NEVER join it on any campus. My husband and I are working very hard to insure that our kids will know their faith so well that they will never be fooled by CCC and its methods of enticing kids away from the Catholic Church on thousands of campuses worldwide.

MY RESPONSE: Although the Reader cites her personal circumstance in this post, the fallacy she uses is equivocation, where the equivocal term is "Catholic Church". Equivocation occurs when the same word (or term) is used two different ways, or the parties involved in the discussion are defining the term differently, thinking they are using the same definition for the word.

In this case, what the Reader understood when she was younger about the Church is considerably different from how she understands it today. The Church has not changed, but her definition of it has. She claims that as a younger person she left the Catholic Church because she was "not properly catechized." That is, what she understood about the Church when she left it was probably neither accurate nor proper. Now, she understands Catholicism accurately and properly. She is comparing two different definitions of the Catholic Church. Consequently, we can't say that she left the true faith, but rather she left a wrong understanding of it. That is a form of a fallacy called equivocation.

This leads me to an explanation of what likely happened to the Reader as she grew up (and has happened to many others.)

1. As a young person, she had a rudimentary and poor understanding of Christianity. As a Catholic, she was badly catechized, and she took only slight interest in her instruction. This resulted in a "lukewarm" Christianity, not a solid or true faith in Christ. Christ said of such persons that he would spit them out of his mouth — perhaps so they could progress to step two.

2. Later, the Reader meets up with some on-fire Evangelicals (or Catholic Charismatics — all the better because they're not Protestant) who have a better understanding of Christianity than the Reader had before, although the Protestants are deficient in certain areas. And, as many of the more rigorous efforts at ecumenical dialogue have revealed, the deficiency is not at the heart level, but the result of linguistic confusion. As Bill Bright came to understand, his definition of terms like "faith" with only subtle modification allowed him to let the future pope edit Crusade's materials for use among Catholic Polish youth.

3. Now, the Reader, having been better catechized in the Christian faith through her Evangelical brothers and sisters, is on-fire for Christ — and much more open to the movement of the Holy Spirit…

 …Who then leads her to discover the fullness of truth in Catholicism; and she returns to the Church.

This reveals how Protestant-Evangelicalism can (not that is necessarily always does) prepare badly catechized Catholics to later accept the fullness of Catholicism.

In fact, many of my Catholic apologist friends have followed this path, as I did. We're good at what we do for the Church, not in spite of Evangelicalism, but because of the training we received there. We didn't come out of a pagan cult or a heretical sect such as Arianism, that denies the divinity of Christ, but rather a form of Christianity that — though it has some theological problems — formed in us an enthusiastic and saving faith in Christ, and, by the way, a decent knowledge of the Bible — something the American Catholic Church of the last 50 years had difficulty inculcating in its members. In short, if the mission of the Catholic Church is to save souls and get them into heaven, then the ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ has helped the Church fulfill that mission.

At the same time, it is important to point out that many Catholics who enter Protestantism may not return to Catholicism. While this is lamentable, there are things to consider that make their rejection of Catholicism understandable and even acceptable.

The acceptable rejection of "Catholicism"

WHAT!? you scream at me. How can it be acceptable to reject Catholicism? It's simple. What they are rejecting is not real Catholicism, but either a misunderstanding of it, or the way in which Catholics around them misrepresent it. Remember the earlier problem that the Reader confronted with equivocation. We're not talking about someone who recognizes the truth of Catholicism and then rejects it. We're talking about people who truly believe that when we pray to Mary we are worshiping her. Of course, that is not what we are doing. Prayer to a saint by a Catholic is not worship, but simply a request of another member of the Church to intercede to Christ on our behalf.

(Apologist Dave Armstrong always avoids the phraseology "praying to a saint" — at least in Protestant company — because it is almost universally misunderstood by Protestants to mean "the saint is replacing God and grants the prayer request himself/herself". Protestants equate the word "prayer" with communication with God only (and oftentimes, worship itself). Thus, "asking a saint to pray/intercede" eliminates that misunderstanding by showing that the prayer ultimately goes to God to answer. Of course, the use of the word "pray" here is another form of equivocation — same word, different meaning.)

You can blame non-Catholics for not listening to your explanation, but you cannot fault their belief that it is idolatry to worship Mary. It is! They're right. I contend that the issue here is not to blame Protestants for believing wrong about Catholicism, but to blame Catholics for not explaining the faith properly, defending it provocatively, and living it morally.

The Equivocation of Being Anti-Catholic

If we are to claim that Campus Crusade for Christ is inherently "anti-Catholic" because many individuals in Crusade explicitly use anti-Catholic rhetoric, then we have to extend the "anti-Catholic" label to the many "Catholics" who embrace abortion, homosexual "marriages" — and a host of other non-Catholic things. At one level, there's equivocation of rhetoric (what Evangelicals tend to do), but at the other there's equivocation of lifestyle or political policy (what too many "Catholics" tend to do). While the definitions may be different, the danger of Catholics leading equivocal lifestyles (defining Catholic moral values by personal preferences) is far more damaging than Evangelicals misunderstanding Catholicism while demanding Catholics lead lives of holiness.

That leads us to…

Doctrinal Differences

In the former article, I wrote how the Polish Catholic hierarchy, including Karol Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II) had edited and approved Campus Crusade for Christ's Christian discipleship materials for use among Polish youth in the Oasis program.

THE READER: I wonder how the [religious educational] materials were modified for the Poles, so that they won the Bishop's approval. In my experience the heresies of "sola scriptura," "salvation security," and "salvation by faith alone" were pretty basic to Crusade's teachings, even at the most beginning levels… There are so many great Catholic materials being produced, I can't imagine a reason why Crusade's materials would need to be used for youth ministry. 

MY RESPONSE: Evidently, Bishop Karol Wojtyla and Fr. Franciszek Blachnicki didn't think such materials existed in Poland during the communist occupation. The reader is confusing 2007 America with 1976 Communist Poland. Huge difference. This is a case of equivocation that defines a past era and setting as having the same definition as the current era and setting. A similar mistake is often made when comparing God's judgment upon the Israelites while traveling through the wilderness in an era of "the law," and God's judgment upon us today in an era of "grace." There is justice in both situations, but the time and place are significantly different.

Linguistic Confusion

Getting back to sola Scriptura, eternal security, and faith alone — many of these doctrinal differences are resolved by clarifying definitions. These "heresies" are not the result of Evangelical heretical thinking in the same way that the Church experienced heresy in the early centuries, e.g. from Arius (c. AD 250-336), or Nestorius (c. 386-c. 451). Then, the parties understood clearly the definition of terms that were discussed. Today, with most of our Evangelical brothers and sisters, the disagreements are largely, but not completely, the result of linguistic confusion and equivocation. When the linguistic confusions were properly explained to Bill Bright (the founder of Campus Crusade), he came to an understanding of the subtle differences in salvation by faith vs. faith alone (and other issues) and he agreed to let the Polish bishops change his materials to agree with the Church's magisterial teaching.

In terms of "faith alone", equivocation is again at work. In the broadest sense, faith (from the Catholic perspective) includes faith in ALL the means of salvation that Christ left us and that Catholicism embraces. Some Evangelicals will explain "faith" to be simply a mental assent that Jesus is Lord. But, interestingly enough, that is NOT what they practice — and in their hearts they believe very much what Catholic doctrine teaches, if examined closely and the equivocation clarified.  In contradiction to what you often hear Protestants "say" they believe, Evangelicals DO embrace the teachings of Trent that anathematized the Church's first understandings of what Luther's "faith alone" meant. That is, they DO regard the saving work of Christ on the cross as necessary, along with the work of the Holy Spirit, and the importance of good works that grow out of a charitable love for others.

Lutheran-Catholic Justification Agreement

The absence of belief in these things was condemned by the Council of Trent. Clearing this all up is one reason the Vatican and the Federation of Lutheran Churches in 1998 signed the Justification Agreement, which claims that the crux of the Protestant Reformation (faith alone) no longer exists. Yet, here is the interesting thing that occurred doctrinally in coming to that agreement: NOTHING!!! NEITHER CHURCH CHANGED ITS DOCTRINE. So, what happened? It was linguistic confusion, fallacious communication, such as equivocation and a few others. It's hard to believe, but that's what happened. So, Dave Armstrong points out, "we must not represent mainstream "Reformation" Protestantism and Evangelicalism today as teaching a bald "mental assent" either, lest we make the same mistake in over-generalizing or false attribution that Catholics are often victims of."

Similar clarifications (that avoid fallacies of linguistic confusion) are used to bring Catholics and Evangelicals together on the issues of "eternal security" and "sola Scriptura". For instance, I can demonstrate how all Catholic doctrines are found in Scripture, either explicitly, implicitly, or directly deducible from other biblical doctrines.

We Will Be Saved by Beauty

Dostoyevsky wrote: "The Beautiful will save us." How many people, Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) wonders, understand that Dostoyevsky refers here to the redeeming Beauty of Christ? For me, that redeeming beauty simultaneously points to the beauty of truth evident in natural revelation (reason), and well as special revelation (faith). There is a perfect beauty in how the universe of mind, matter and spirit work together to remove all contradiction and explain all paradox such as we've examined in this article about equivocation. The result is that reason and faith together will lead us to life in Jesus Christ our Lord. O my soul. Think clearly, that we might bring peace to Earth, and Salvation to the World.