From: jocallag@darwin.helios.nd.edu (john ocallaghan)
Subject: Re: Communication Problems, Gregory XVI and (oh, no, not again) Railways
Organization: OUC, University of Notre Dame
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 22:19:58 GMT

In article <6414@mccuts.uts.mcc.ac.uk> mfulsmb@uts.mcc.ac.uk (Martin Barry) writes:
>>     But I did find evidence of my thesis!
>>In a book entitled "A Dictionary of the Popes" by the noted
>>Anglican historian J.N.D.Kelly I looked up the predecessor of
>>Pope Pius IX, namely Gregory XVI. Kelly says:
>>     "Gregory XVI was an austere, learned monk who was hostile
>>     to modern trends (he refused to have railways in his
>>     domains, calling them 'chemins d'enfer')."  
>
>Steve: I have a copy of the book in front of me. It says:
>
>	"[...] An austere, learned monk, hostile to modern trends
>	(he banned railways in his domains, calling them 'chemins
>	d'enfer') and to Italian nationalism in particular, ..." (p 307)
>
>So why did you misquote it? In particular, you replaced the word
>'banned', which seems to be rather inconvenient for your thesis, with
>the more equivocal 'refused to have'. 
>
>
>A pope bans something and describes it as 'the road to hell'. And you
>seriously expect us to believe that this was not a 'condemnation'?
>You'll have to do better than that.

Hello?  Is anybody home?  Apparently Steve changed a word.  You however
seem to find obscurantism the higher road.  If I remember correctly, you 
were trying to indicate in your posting what you took to be the proper 
attitude toward papal teaching.  You characterized those who disagrred with you
as holding that Catholics had to hold as true and obey everything the pope 
said.  Citing the infamous railway, you said this indicated the absurdity of
the claims of those who disagrred with you.
Now you provide us with the documentation of your claim.  But what is this 
documentation?  Second hand, depending upon the authority of the writer
of the book.  But suppose it is true, as I have every reason to believe it is.
What does it say on the face of it?  "[h]e banned railways in his domains."
But you change this in your argument to he "he banned railways." Its as
simple as that.  He banned railways!  My God, how absurd.  He banned railways
for God's sake.  YOu ignorant peasants, you hang on every word of the pope,
surrending your intellect and will to a foreign power; but for God's sake
he banned railways.  Don't you see how ignorant you are?  Join me  in my
enlightened stance
More to the point you use this argument by ambiguity as an example of how
we should not be so docile when confronted by the condemnation of artificial
birth control in Paul VI encyclical letter Humanae Vitae, a letter addressed to 
all persons of good will everywhere, in which the pope exercising his pastoral
office enunciates the clear and long standing teaching of the Catholic church
on the nature of the moral norms involved in human sexuality.

I thought you were a big fan of Newman's.  Or have you not read him, but only about
him, trusting the authority of the author?  In particular, if you had followed
Steves advice, and read the Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, you would have seen
him making very fine distinctions between the power of the pope as a temporal ruler and
his authority as pope on matters of faith and morals.  The quote as you
cite clearly says on the face of it, that the pope "banned railways in his
domains."  Whydo you then drop the phrase "in his domains?"  Is it because
it gets in the way of your use of it.  In fact your use of it smacks of 
the tactics of Gladstone, wheose Expostulation Newman was replying to in
his Letter.  You know as well as I do that at the time, the Pope was the temporlal ruler of the Papal States, having full and final control over the temporal
government of those states.  "Banning railways in his domains" is clearly a
temporal judgement of a temporal ruler, legal and binding upon those who
are governed by that temporal ruler.  That's a far cry from the teaching of
the successor of Peter on matters of faith and morals, don't you think.  If
you read Newman, you would know it.

>
>It seems your determination to misrepresent the argument knows
>no bounds. The point was not to typify papal teaching, but, as you
>know, to point out that there are examples where papal teaching has
>certainly been questionable: all directed towards the more interesting
>question of the limits of 'obsequium religiosum' (deference to the 
>Magisterium) and the primacy of conscience. If you choose to misrepresent
>my position as trying to discredit the papacy, you are free to do
>so; but I will not waste my time in continuing to discuss it with you.

If I rember correctly, you quoted Newman's famous statement that he would
toast his conscience before toasting the pope.  This quote clearly bears
on 'obsequium religiousm'.  It occurs in the Letter to the Duke of Norfolk.
But I wonder, when you reading the letter and came across it, did you also
read the following quote in there which also clearly bears upon 'obsequium
religiosum': "Unless a man is able to say to himself, as in the Presence of
God (emphasis is Newman's) that he must not, and dare not, act upon the
Papal injunction, he is bound to obey it, and would commit a great sin in
disobeying it."  Pity when people are quoting Newman, they seem to look
past this "as in the Presence of God."

>
>Sanctimonious claptrap. If you're going to preach about fidelity to
>sources you'd better be a bit more careful when you cite sources
>yourself; or choose something a bit more obscure than the _Oxford 
>Dictionary of Popes_ to attempt to misquote.

I think we've seen how you use quotes.

>
>I'm tired of this discussion, Steve. We started by discussing the nature
>of authority in the Church and of our response to it. It's been at
>your prompting that the discussion has degenerated into this frantic
>burrowing in libraries over obscure incidents in the lives of
>unimportant popes. You chose to split hairs over historical facts (to
>remind you: you proposed that Innocent IV never really approved of torture,
>ample historical documentation notwithstanding; and you attempted to
>rationalize away Gregory XVI's documented condemnation of Railways).

Forgive me if I am wrong, but you still do not seem to have provided the
"ample historical documentation" (hope I didn't change any words there ;->),
nor the historical context.  And we have seen what you made of Gregory's
"documented condemnation of Railways 'in his domains'".

>
>I'm left at a loss to understand your position. "Every papal utterance
>deserves our submission," you say. "Any papal utterance to which submission
>would be manifestly insane is in fact NOT a papal utterance." This is what 
>we philosophers of science call a non-falsifiable theory. Intellectually
>incoherent and historically uncontaminated by contact with the facts. (Happy
>New Year, Steve :-) )
1) When did Steve or anyone else, except in your imagination, say "Every
papal utterance deserves our submission?"  Apparently Steve changed a word.
Apparently you are putting words in his mouth.  I suppose if he forgets
words, you'll always find some to put in his mouth.

2) Didn't you pick up in your reading Newman, that in fact Newman's
position, citing many Church authorities, is that insanity impedes papal
authority?

3) In any case, what you put in Steve's mouth is not a non-falsifiable theory,
for the simple reason that it is not a theory.  In fact, it is a statement
of the Church's own self understanding, like "I am seeing a computer screen
now."

>
>I, meanwhile, am happy to continue to be guided by the wise words of Bishop
>Butler. Nothing in all the evasiveness and name-calling has come even
>remotely close to refuting the clarity of his vision of the church.
>One last time:
>
>"One of the positive results of the [Humanae Vitae] crisis was
>that many Catholics, aided by theologians, were driven to
>make a sharp distinction between the 'infallible' and the
>'non-infallible' pronouncements of Church authority,
>including the authority of the Pope himself. ... The upshot
>is that responsible Christians have a wide area of reflection in which
>they are not constricted by papal or episcopal 'infallibility'."

I guess you have your authorities to whom you submit your judgement then?

Apparently, you did not note in your reading of Newman that he, citing many
Church authorities was making those same sharp distinctions a hundred years
ago for the reading public of England.
It seems Bishop Butler is either behind the times if he thinks that such 
occurred only after the issuing of Humane Vitae, or you are not adequately
representing to us his erudition.
Further, your quote from him deals only with the issue of the infallibility
or non-infallibility.  But surely you remember from your reading of Newman
the distinction he drew, basing it upon the long Tradition of the Church, 
between the ordinary obedience the faithful owe the supreme pontiff in matters
of faith and morals, and his charism of infallibility in matters of faith
and morals.

Happy New year to you.
John O'Callaghan
>PS: A couple of citations for Gregory XVI's feelings about railways. There are
>more, but I'm not sure this discussion is not worth the walk to the
>library to note down the authors. :-)
>
>(1) "Chemins de fer, chemins d'enfer." Pope Gregory XVI, quoted in F. Nielsen,
>_The history of the papacy in the XIXth century_, tr. A.J. Mason, London:
>Murray, 1906.

P.S. This is second hand.
> 
>It means roughly 'railways, roads to hell'. You may also like to know that
>the same Pope condemned the attendance of scientific conferences:
>
>"The Papal Universities received a letter informing them that the Holy See
>had good and sufficient reasons for not merely forbidding all subjects of
>the Pope to take part in any scientific congress; it was even forbidden that
>anyone should enter into correspondence with them." (ibid)

Context?  More specific citation?  Page number?  Volume?  They're big books.
Was the pope writing on matters of faith and morals?  Did thes people work
for him?  Was this directed to Catholics everywhere, to all people of good
will, or to those who worked for him in the papal universities?  What sort
of authority did a college or university president or chancellor have over
those working for him in the nineteenth century?  Ah the ghost of Gladstone
lives.

>
>So no submitting abstracts either, guys. Best to follow Steve Barr's advice,
>and abstain voluntarily. You know it makes sense.

Or best not to read the popes but about the popes and their dasterdly deeds.

>
>(2) "With hindsight, it is clear that his [i.e. Pope Paul VI's] best course
>would have been to procrastinate and equivocate indefinitely so that the ban
>on contraception was never explicitly disowned, but quietly allowed to
>lapse, like earlier papal anathemas against co-education, gaslighting and
>railways. However, by setting up in the glare of modern publicity a
>commission to investigate and report on the matter, first Pope John and then
>Pope Paul had manoeuvred the Papacy into a dogmatic cul-de-sac from which
>there was no escape. The only saving grace in the situation (suggesting that
>the Holy Spirit might, after all, have been playing some part in the
>proceedings) was that it was made clear on its publication that the
>encyclical [i.e. Humanae Vitae, of July 1968] was not an "infallible"
>pronouncement. This left open the theoretical possibility, however narrowly
>defined, of conscientious dissent from its conclusions, and of some future
>reconsideration of the issue"
> 
>David Lodge: "How Far Can You Go?", Penguin Books, 1980. pp114-5.

The title of this book says it all.  Reminds me of my childish questions to
my father, "Dad how much sin can I do and still get into heaven?"

It would be interesting to speculate how long the Church would have lasted past
the ressurection on a policy of "procrastination" and equivocation.



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