We have previously worked out that for covenantal moral theologies, both the authority and the knowledge of the Catholic Church subsist entirely in her eucharistic worship of her Lord. Mother Church has no authority, nor any knowledge, in addition to, apart from, that worship.
Here we argue that therefore, Mother Church does not and cannot have any kind of expertise, in anything whatever, because she does not and cannot know as an expert might.
An expert knows 'about' things; and his expert knowledge is partial, and subject to challenge. In fact, what an expert 'knows' may simply be wrong, whether partially wrong, understandably wrong, fecklessly wrong, or maliciously wrong.
But Mother Church perfectly, infallibly knows her Lord. She knows her Lord not in any abstract or incomplete way, nor by means of intermediary assumptions or theories; she knows Him particularly, concretely, historically, immediately, directly, eucharistically, nuptially, in her daily worship of Him. Her knowledge is of an entirely different order than that of the expert.
Moreover, even if the Catholic Church could possess knowledge 'about' things, that sort of knowledge would be completely unavailing for salvation. For covenantal moral theologies, knowledge 'about' things is not the kind of knowledge that can even in theory bring eternal life. A real substantial life is only available through the sheer gift of immersion in the death of the Lord: in the particular kinship history of sacraments, beliefs, and gifts, works, and obligations with the Lord and His mother and bride and with all their adopted kin which we have called The Way.
Historically, however, there seems to have been not merely an unwillingness but an inability to take with systematic, methodological seriousness the implications of the distinction between knowing 'about' things as an expert might, and Mother Church's knowledge of substantial reality.
Covenantal moral theologies identify the underlying difficulty as confusion regarding 'Being', 'Substance', and 'Nature', including 'human nature'.
By way of example, we will (very very briefly) review the Church's 16th and 17th century suppression of the heliocentric theory (the sun is the center of the universe, and the Earth revolves around the sun).
Instantly we note the limitations of expertise: the sun is no longer taken by astronomers to be the center of the physical universe. (In fact, along with hundreds of thousands of other stars, the sun is located within one of the spiral arms of the Milky Way galaxy, far away from the center even of the Milky Way).
In a famous 1615 letter to the Grand Duchess of Tuscany, Galileo characterized the issue as a dispute not about the Church's knowledge of "how to go to heaven" (which he insisted he had never contested), but about whether the Church's knowledge, given to her by the Holy Spirit, extended as far as to provide her with the authority to suppress investigation into "how the heavens go."
And he quoted St. Augustine in support of the view that the Holy Spirit never intended men's knowledge of "how the heavens go" to be of any help to their salvation -- thus at the very least it was unnecessary for the Church to suppress investigation on the subject.
Covenantal moral theologies extend St. Augustine's argument in the following way. There is an underlying reason that knowing "how the heavens go" is not necessary for knowing "how to go to heaven." That reason is the distinction between the knowledge available to mere expertise and the knowledge of substantial reality Mother Church possesses as gift in her daily worship of her Lord.
This is the reason Mother Church does not need to know "how the heavens go," how television works, why the sky is blue, how to fix a leaky faucet: the kind of partial, imperfect knowledge that an expert possesses -- knowledge 'about' something -- has no ability whatever to get us to heaven.
By contrast, Mother Church's knowledge is entirely covenantal, radically historical, nuptial; in her daily worship of her Lord, she is One Flesh with Him in the One Sacrifice. Thus she has perfect and unsurpassable knowledge of substantial reality, which is an entirely different, and -- literally -- an infinitely superior order of knowing.
And if we ourselves freely come to know substantial reality in the only way possible to know it -- by living it in ecclesia -- then even we poor sinners will go to heaven, whether we have expert knowledge in something, or not.
Covenantal moral theologies note that the Catholic Church has in practice repudiated any claim that she has expertise regarding "how the heavens go." Much more importantly, implicitly she has acknowledged that her lack of knowledge regarding "how the heavens go" has absolutely no negative impact on her knowledge of "how to go to heaven."
In an implicit acknowledgment of both these things, in 1758, Pope Benedict XIV removed from the Index Librorum Prohibitorum Copernicus's 1543 work, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, which had argued that the sun was the center of the universe, and the Earth and the other known planets revolved around the sun.
Subsequent magisterial proclamation on related points often focused on stressing that Truth cannot contradict Truth: conflict between the Catholic Faith and science -- on any topic -- can only be illusory, once their proper relation is accurately discerned.
Thus Pope St. John Paul II's 1992 statement regarding Galileo, that "The tragic mutual misunderstanding has been [wrongly] interpreted as an expression of the constitutive contradiction between science and faith." Truth cannot contradict Truth. Regarding science and faith, each is the expert in its own domain.
But it was precisely the question of which of the two domains had the right of jurisdiction over heliocentric theories that had originally been at issue. The Church had in fact taken sides, had suppressed not all theories of "how the heavens go" but only heliocentric theories, with at least the implicit claim that she had the right to do so. It was a right she later repudiated -- but only practically, only implicitly, only on that particular topic, in that particular case.
Admittedly, it was a long journey, even to there. From the point of view of the Catholic Church, besides scriptural passages such as Josh 10:13 that had typically been heard as direct evidence from God Himself that the sun moved around the earth, overturning an earth-centered (and hence a man-centered) universe not only seemed to have profound religious implications, it also went directly contrary to settled science -- that is, to Aristotelian science.
The journey was long for science as well: years after Galileo had died, men were still unable to observe stellar parallax and thus answer a decisive scientific objection to heliocentrism. (The first observations of stellar parallax occurred almost 200 years after Galileo's death).
Magisterial proclamation eventually evidently settled on the idea that the Church in effect had not claimed any expertise regarding "how the heavens go" and had not exactly opposed heliocentrism, but was only striving to protect the Faith and the faithful from very difficult ideas (a) that seemed to contradict Scripture and Tradition; (b) that definitely contradicted 'settled science'; and anyway (c) were apt to be inaccurate if not dead wrong. (And in fact there proved to be inaccuracies in the heliocentric theories of both Copernicus and Galileo).
However, it is also evident that the magisterium has not definitively given up on the idea that the Catholic Church has expertise, at least in some things.
Hence the multitude of assertions, or simple assumptions, venerable at least by their longstanding use, that, while Mother Church may not have expert knowledge on how to fix a leaky faucet, nevertheless she still does have expert knowledge 'about' Important Things such as 'human nature' or 'the common good' or 'human flourishing', or politics, or law, etc.
To the contrary, covenantal moral theologies attest that Mother Church has no basis for any claim that she is able to offer expert knowledge on any subject to anyone. And covenantal moral theologies further argue that even if Mother Church had expert knowledge on some subject, her expert knowledge could only be completely irrelevant to "how to go to heaven."
For covenantal moral theologies, it is patent that many former moral theologies might be tempted to urge a speedy revival of the Index Librorum Prohibitorum on the basis of the preceding paragraph alone, for it would seem to undermine not only the grounds for centuries of theological speculation but also the grounds for centuries of episcopal proclamation.
Nevertheless, we proceed. Nor can covenantal moral theologies find any basis by which Mother Church gets to pick and choose the topics on which she is expert. Establishing a basis for such picking-and-choosing would seem to require an infinite regress of expertise.
After all, at some times, the magisterium has claimed that the Catholic Church is the Expert Arbiter regarding which astronomical theory is to be given pride of place; but at other times, she has at least in practice repudiated that claim.
On what grounds did the magisterium claim the right to regulate astronomical theories? What happened to those grounds when the magisterium implicitly repudiated that claim? Even more neuralgic is the fact that yet some other expertise must ground the harmonization of the original diametrically opposed claims, such that the conflict can 'now' be seen to have been illusory, the result of a "tragic mutual misunderstanding;" and so on.
Or at times, the magisterium has said that the Catholic Church is the Expert Arbiter of which philosophy is supreme:
...the Church has adopted his [St. Thomas Aquinas's] philosophy for her own, as innumerable documents of every kind attest. [Studiorum Ducem §11]
...the Church demands that future priests be instructed in the philosophic disciplines "according to the manner, doctrine, and principles of the Angelic Doctor"... [Humani Generis §31]
And at other times, not:
The Church has no philosophy of her own nor does she canonize any one particular philosophy in preference to others... [Fides et ratio §49]
We now advance some reasons why it has been difficult for Mother Church to make a clear distinction between how experts know and how she herself knows. We find the underlying difficulty in notions that have a merely philosophical foundation; which is to say, in a noncovenantal, a-sacramental, nonhistorical foundation, for 'Being', 'Substance', and 'Nature', including 'human nature'.
Covenantal Theology makes it eminently clear that the Catholic Church has no knowledge of 'Being' as nonhistorical, non-Eucharistic, non-covenantal. Mother Church does not and cannot know an ineffable Thomistic Deus Unus, a transcendent absolute Agent Intellect, an unapproachable Unmoved Mover. In fact, nobody can:
While the influence of Plato's Timaeus was still effective in the Thomist metaphysics, by way of the tradition stemming from Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, coloring the notion of the natural with a religious significance and value, this nostalgia was irreconcilable with the dogmatic rationalism of the Aristotelian act-potency analysis. This has the consequence that the usual "Thomist" analogy of being set up a radically contradictory postulate of a transcendent creator who is "naturally" known to be the metaphysical absolute, for it is immediately evident that of the transcendent absolute precisely nothing is or can be known, as a matter of definition: of the ineffable, nothing is said. This had been worked out in the Latin West by the close of the thirteenth century and, since the nominalist triumph of logic over cosmology in the next century, only a school loyalty coupled to a religious obedience, now unavailing, has kept the Thomist "natural" or philosophical analogy in use....
[CT Vol.I, Ch. II, n. 37, p. 278]
Covenantal moral theologies are also clear that the Catholic Church knows of no 'God' who is 'before', 'beyond', 'behind' the God revealed by her Lord.
Christ, the same yesterday, today and forever, is the full revelation of the Father, the full gift of the Spirit: to seek beyond Christ's revelation of the Father is to deny him.
[ CT Vol. II, Appendix, p. 657 ]
Covenantal moral theologies, following Covenantal Theology itself, also make a distinction not made heretofore: "Substance" is not in any way some "dehistoricized cosmology" (some time-less, nonhistorical order, algorithm, Being, Law, or kosmos) but far rather, substantial reality just is the Event of the New Covenant, the continuing radically historical, daily work of the risen Lord as One Flesh with His bride in the One Sacrifice, mediated in this life ex opere operato in the sacraments.
Nor does Mother Church have access, let alone privileged access, to the "rationalized notion of 'nature' heretofore in common use" [ CT Vol. II, Appendix, p. 656 ] -- to any nonhistorical, non-Eucharistic moral ordo or 'natural' Law assumed to be available to autonomous 'right reason'.
Despite longstanding theological assertion to the contrary, there is no Eternal Rulebook In The Sky -- to which even her Lord is subject. A Rulebook that puts even the freedom of the Lord Himself in issue can form no part of covenantal moral theologies.
Covenantal moral theologies attest that the very notion of a free responsibility was absurd to the Greeks. Theological embrace of Greek ideas therefore self-generates the need for an elaborate theological scaffolding in an attempt to render illusory the evident contradiction of an unfree Lord. Even more:
In fact, for covenantal moral theologies, a necessitated brotherhood, a substantial, true moral ordo that is imposed on Man -- by 'generation' or 'nature' or in any other way -- contradicts everything about the free responsibility of substantial human being that the Church possesses as Gift and offers to all men of all times and places.
Directly to the contrary, the "rationalized notion of 'nature' heretofore in common use" invokes no free responsibility whatever; that 'nature' is unfree a priori, it is an imposition by definition, by deliberate claim.
The very essence of such 'natural law', as a prominent Thomist once summed it up, is "obligations antecedent to choice, rules that bind us whether we like it or not." [ Ralph McInerny, Catholic Dossier 4(5), p. 6, 1998]. Such a 'natural law' flatly contradicts the sheer giftedness, the free responsibility, of the New Covenant.
In addition, for covenantal moral theologies, substantial human nature
"...is the ongoing, historical, eventful unity of the One Flesh in the New Covenant. This, and only this, is human nature -- not "shares in" human being: it is substantial human being per se: free, multi-personal, historical, covenantal, sacramental, ecclesial."
In sum: by definition, Mother Church has no access whatever to ineffable Being; thus, any claim of access to ineffable Being -- let alone unique, infallible privileged access -- cannot be the basis of any claim of hers to possess expert knowledge 'about' anything at all.
Nor can a claim of expertise 'about' 'human nature' found Catholic profession and teaching in any way; at best, the claim is illegible, irrelevant -- "how the heavens go" transposed to "how 'human nature' goes." For Mother Church's substantial human nature is not a series of facts or propositions 'about' her One Flesh union with her Lord in the One Sacrifice.
Indeed, neither 'the intellect' nor any other human faculty is able to seek substantial human nature, for Mother Church's substantial human nature cannot be sought; it can only be possessed as she herself possesses it, in and through her worship of her Lord, as free gift in ecclesia.
Only immersion in the death of the Lord -- an immersion which neither 'the intellect' nor any other fallen faculty can provide -- gifts a man with a personal, unique kinship history with the Bridegroom and His bride and all their adopted kin, a kinship history which just is that man's real, true, substantial Name -- his very self, without remainder. (As we will shortly discuss, a man living The Way is indeed able to bring all his faculties to bear regarding that mystery, that gift).
There may have been other 'natural' bases by which the magisterium has claimed expertise 'about' something. However, formulating the issue in those terms obviates further discussion regarding them.
Nor does the Catholic Church even possess any privileged defensive knowledge -- knowledge regarding how she should best protect and defend her sacraments and her children.
Being unable to possess expertise 'about' "how the heavens go" is no isolated exception to a contrary general rule. The reason the Catholic Church possesses zero expertise 'about' "how the heavens go" is the same reason she possesses zero expertise 'about' anything whatever: the Holy Spirit never intended the Catholic Church to possess expertise 'about' anything, since even expert knowledge 'about' things has nothing to do with going to heaven.
Her permanent and total lack of expertise does no harm whatever to her mission and profession and worship but is simply irrelevant to what she really knows, which is "how to go to heaven." And (as just discussed) there are reasons why this distinction has not previously been the subject of systematic investigation.
These are hard sayings, but for covenantal moral theologies, there is no alternative. Covenantal moral theologies must take seriously the Catholic Church's essential indigence, which she experiences daily in her Eucharistic worship of her crucified and risen Lord Who has done great things for her, Who has made her One Flesh with Him in the One Sacrifice.
This is not at all to say that knowledge of how the heavens go, or of indoor plumbing, is trivial, irrelevant, contemptible:
... At the same time, the sacramentality of historical objectivity poses an evident problem: we live and die by the pragmatic objectivity of sticks and stones, the denial of whose objectivity is fatal. However fallen the world may be, we inhabit it and cannot ignore its empirical impact. The assertion of a sacramentally-grounded hermeneutic can be heard by the practical ear as an invitation to phantasize, to avoid encounter with objective reality. Yet the facts are quite otherwise. Any concrete rejection of the transempirical or metaphysical objectivity of those sticks and stones in favor of an empirical objectivity can only proceed to their analytical disintegration, for in history they have no ascertainable empirical unity, thus no empirical objectivity. There remains only a pragmatic assignment of extrinsic value or disvalue to such objects, a finally utilitarian determination, denying them any intrinsic significance or value.
[ CT III n. 285 ]
An expert who knows 'about' something, such as "how the heavens go," can also be a Catholic and follow The Way, and in his kinship history with our Lord and our Lady and all their adopted kin, he can know in a manner that is entirely unavailable to him as an expert, though his knowledge will ever be sacramentally mediated, not ever unmediated and direct, as her knowledge is: for we are not His bride.
Indeed, covenantal moral theologies attest that the Catholic Church can offer an expert something that his expertise can never bring him: substantial reality, substantial human nature, substantial unity, a truly personal Name, a life lived in ecclesia with her and her Lord and all their kin as sheer gift forever and ever.
Moreover, that eucharistic, substantial life she offers him is also the only life that perpetually nourishes, perpetually is optimistic about, inquiry into the world of sticks and stones, and thus brings to expertise something that expertise cannot provide for itself.
The Way has the power to bring to expertise what it cannot provide for itself; and the expertise of both philosophers and plumbers can be exceedingly useful to Mother Church, who still must daily encounter "the pragmatic objectivity of sticks and stones;" but expertise cannot give even one expert what he needs to go to heaven.
Even the study 'about' morality called "ethics" cannot get us to heaven. On the contrary, a man, even a Catholic, can be an expert in 'ethics', but absent his freely responsible participation in The Way, he may not only bring immorality to everyone he personally touches, he may also encourage students into immorality by his anti-Eucharistic, anti-sacramental theories and arguments, buttressed by his putative authority as an expert in 'ethics'.
Covenantal moral theologies are clear that morality is not any study 'about' morality whatever, not any system or theory of 'ethics' at all, but just is a praxis -- a legible, specific, particular praxis -- incapable of comprehension in any theory whatever. 'Ethics' can be an honest -- or poor, or dishonest -- study 'about' morality, but it cannot encompass, let alone dictate to, the praxis that just is morality, that just is holiness.
(We have treated of this distinction previously regarding the slyly evil 1972 monograph put out by a Commission under the aegis of the Catholic Theological Society of America, which attempted to subtly undermine Catholic praxis in practically every paragraph, and which ironically was titled "Catholic Hospital Ethics").
But if expertise is not necessary for salvation, and in any event, Mother Church can claim no expertise 'about' anything whatever, on what basis can she instruct her children regarding what is good and what is evil?
Previously we had considered the sacrament of Matrimony from a radically historical, covenantal perspective, and had hazarded guesses regarding the particulars of what Mother Church knows by means of that sacrament, within the sacrament of Matrimony.
By examining the holy order and praxis of that sacrament, we aimed to draw conclusions about which specific deeds intrinsically attack the holy order and praxis of that sacrament.
Hence we represented that small effort as a proof of concept: Mother Church might in fact be able to tell her children what is good and what is evil -- with as little recourse as possible to any theory 'about' things, including any theory 'about' 'marriage' -- by staying 'as close as possible' to the sacraments.
Putting it mildly, the meaning of 'as close as possible' is presently a teensie bit vague; but perhaps it was sufficiently precise in that demonstration to serve as a proof of concept.
What we ventured regarding Matrimony remains a guess, and is entirely subject to the judgment of the Church.
Yet such an effort has considerable advantages. Matrimony is concrete; it is a specific sacramental praxis which Images the covenant of the risen Lord with His bride. Thus, like all the sacraments, it is a specific praxis in which heaven and earth infallibly kiss.
In the same way, covenantal moral theologies propose that the most reliable hints as to what constitutes (for example) "the common good" and "human flourishing" must come from the sacraments themselves -- not from theories 'about' anything whatever, not even theories 'about' "the common good" and "human flourishing."
Our proof of concept suggested that a theory 'about' something is not the only way to tell good and evil apart specifically, practically; and of course, if morality is indeed a praxis incapable of comprehension within any theory, as covenantal moral theologies contend, then that specific praxis which just is morality, and not any theory, must be the foundation of moral teaching.
Thus particularity per se is hardly the exclusive province of the expert. Indeed, the monograph on Catholic Hospital 'ethics' mentioned above amounts to a veritable clinic on how experts can deploy vagueness to attempt to obviate the particularity of Catholic praxis.
Mother Church's knowledge of her Lord is not abstract, not ideal; it is radically historical -- particular. Indeed, particularity is how she expresses the freedom of her worship of her Lord.
Indeed, the Lord Jesus Himself is 'this' and not 'that'. He is not a 'type', an 'example' out of an infinity of "possible objects." He is concrete, specific, historical, free. The Catholic faith is that Jesus of Nazareth alone is the crucified and risen Lord; He alone is the only begotten Son of God, One Flesh with His unique mother and one-and-only bride in the One Sacrifice, by which Eucharist alone we are redeemed. It is a hard saying, but from the standpoint of covenantal moral theologies, a Catholic faith absent a freely responsible 'this' and not 'that' has no room even for Jesus Himself; it is not Catholic at all.
Mother Church decided exactly what books are in the Bible; she decided that only good bread and good wine are valid matter for offering in the Sacrifice of the Mass; that Jewish dietary restrictions need not be adhered to; that Matrimony is freely entered into by one man and one woman, and is permanent; and so forth.
Given the Reform and its continued influence, it behooves us here also to emphasize that Sacred Scripture not only is inseparable from the sacraments; it comes from the sacraments. As some contemporary apologists are fond of saying: the Catholic Church wrote the Bible. The Holy Spirit Who inspired Sacred Scripture is breathed into the world solely in ecclesia, in and through the One Flesh in the One Sacrifice.
The free obedience of the Son to the Father is oft remarked upon. Here we remark that the free obedience of the Holy Spirit to the Son is just as comprehensive. The Spirit blows where He will, indeed -- but only as He is directed by the living historical totus Christus. In and through the work of the living Christ with His bride, the Holy Spirit continues to recapitulate in history the Good Creation -- recreating, thus restoring, it to Christ.
A covenantal Holy Spirit is thus never some 'generalized' spirit. His procession within history is as a work of the living Christ with His bride. We will not find a 'Holy Spirit' separable from the continuing work of the living Christ with His bride.
Never will the Holy Spirit proceed from Christ as separable from His bride: the Holy Spirit is given in history strictly and only in the breath or breathing of the totus Christus. There is no 'holiness' whatever in any spirit who operates in history apart from, let alone against, the Bridegroom with His bride.
Hence the ground of these above-mentioned very specific and particular decisions by the Catholic Church is not expertise at all; their sole foundation is that the sacraments (very much including Holy Orders) are the continuing work of the risen Lord with His bride with the Holy Spirit in the glory of God the Father -- that the sacraments are real.
In Fides et ratio §50, Pope St. John Paul II does not confirm Mother Church as an expert -- who decides as an expert might -- but rather establishes the priority of the Catholic Faith over Reason.
Covenantal moral theologies unpack this passage in the following way. The "light of faith" does not wait upon Reason to tell it whether the Faith is true; rather, the Spiritus Creator continually breathed into the world in and through the Eucharistic One Flesh in the One Sacrifice creates in the Church's Magisterium as sheer gift, ex nihilo, the mission, the authority, and the ability to "exercise a critical discernment" upon those products of Reason "which contradict Christian doctrine."
In the light of faith, therefore, the Church's Magisterium can and must authoritatively exercise a critical discernment of opinions and philosophies which contradict Christian doctrine. [ Fides et ratio §50 ]
From the perspective of covenantal moral theologies, there is no device by which these "discernments" can be 'proved' to be true. Such a 'proof' must be founded on something more lordly than the Lord of history, by which He can be 'evaluated'.
The Catholic Faith is intelligible, but it is intelligible freely, as gift. Thus it is up to each man to answer Jesus's question: "Who do you say that I am?"
Moreover, the Magisterium can evidently stumble; but as to whether it can fall, the answer can only be of the same order as Jesus's question: "Who do you say that I am?" For either He protects His one-and-only bride, the Catholic Church, or He does not.
From the perspective of covenantal moral theologies, a little more can be said here: these authoritative discernments can be fully creative in human history, but only as they are foundationally reactive. They rouse themselves, they rise up, solely as defensive. No expertise, no rationale can encompass them, for the basis of authoritative teachings is not expertise; instead they are so foundationally reactive that they "rest upon no demonstration and even permit no positive formulation."
In a slightly different context that we regard as still completely applicable here, Fr. Keefe writes:
For this [viz., "a truly historical moral conscience in the Church"], there is no rationale; it is a life, not a theory. Out of it emerge convictions as to the decency of human deeds which rest upon no demonstration and even permit no positive formulation; they are a communal recognition of the holy, and reach expression most clearly when most clearly challenged, when the human symbol is threatened by subordination to an alien god in whose image it was not created, whose worship is not life but death.
"A Review and Critique of the C.T.S.A. 'Report'" (of the Commission on Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Hospitals, established by and reporting to the Board of Directors of the Catholic Theological Society of America), Hospital Progress, February, 1973, 69.
As we have said, defending the Church, her sacraments, and her children is one thing. However, the Catholic Church has no expertise in running the social order, nor will she ever have any such; and at any rate, laymen are pushed and prodded 'for their own good' by their betters enough as it is.
Thus for covenantal moral theologies, purely defensive reactions by the magisterium, even if they turn out to be wrong-headed, are vastly preferable to magisterial efforts to 'fix' things. Putting texts advocating heliocentrism on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum is far less objectionable than consciously putting the full moral weight of the magisterium behind efforts to dragoon the laity into instituting and supporting some policy or procedure in the social order.
...Humanae Vitae is a document radically different in kind from Rerum Novarum. Humanae Vitae is authoritative, in a way that Rerum Novarum can never be; for Humanae Vitae is an episcopal protection and defense of the sacrament of Matrimony. Rerum Novarum might be seen as an episcopal endorsement of the opinions of the learned Catholics that were consulted, but it is written with no liturgical authority behind it; for the social order is simply not primarily within the purview of bishops qua bishops. To say otherwise is the true 'clericalism', the usurpation by the clergy of the plain liturgically-founded dignity, authority, and munus of the laity.
Even apart from the limited sacramental authority the episcopate has in the social order, it is easy to find accounts of the faithful struggling to avoid violating justice and the commandments when they seek to obey episcopal demands made in the social encyclicals on behalf of justice and the commandments.
For instance, the faithful may know that instituting a "just wage" (demanded in several of the social encyclicals) may have the effect of rewarding certain poor men at the expense of other poor men; for instance when a man loses his low-wage job because other men must now be paid a "just wage."
Certainly, the Sacred Pontiffs are correct: how to allocate scarce goods must have a moral component; but in the social encyclicals the Pontiffs take only occasional notice even of the fact that many goods, including wages, are scarce; and when the social encyclicals do take notice of this fact, suddenly their 'demands' read much more like 'wishes' (and rightly so).
Apart from those exceptions, presumably, either there cannot be any negative moral consequences arising from carrying out the moral demands made in the social encyclicals, or the faithful are left -- abandoned might be more apt-- to sort out all the innumerable details, and therefore all the potential moral quandaries, for themselves.
Though magisterial discernments can evidently sometimes be woefully deficient, even in error, nonetheless and quite rightly Fides et ratio confirms the priority of the Faith over Reason. For covenantal moral theologies, this is not mere assertion. There is a theological explanation for why the Faith (which is to say, not some vague 'faith,' but the Faith, The Way, not merely as written down but in all its concrete particularity and specificity) has priority over Reason: Reason is covenantally subsidiary to The Way.
The Way is greater than any possible Reason, it informs and nourishes and corrects Reason, it gifts Reason with real confidence, with real optimism, but The Way exercises its authority over Reason not by extinguishing Reason nor by subsuming it but by actively invoking and requiring Reason's own authority.
As Covenantal Theology frequently noted, the Catholic confidence in Reason, in science, in the very act of inquiry, is not "rational" as bound within some even more supreme and subsuming ratio, but rather is foundationally eucharistic, foundationally covenantal, thus foundationally metaphysical not as time-less and ideal but as historical and concrete.
The Way trusts Reason like the Lord trusts us; that is, extravagantly -- unwisely, and too well -- but nevertheless still persistently, and forgiving of flaws. Thus in history, in our acts, we may become more like Him; thus in history, in its discourse, Reason may become more reasonable.
Thus Mother Church freely offers to all men, not expertise, but her own substantial reality with her Lord, as "a life, not a theory," as Fr. Keefe wrote above. The Way cannot be imposed; it is free both in the donor and in the recipient.
Mother Church has no expertise of her own -- not even expertise in how best to defend her worship, her sacraments, and her children. Nor does she get to pick and choose what she is 'really' an expert in.
Nor does she require expertise to help us go to heaven. Expertise, as a function of Reason, is covenantally subsidiary to The Way.
Expertise is "lesser" than the substantial reality that Mother Church possesses as gift in her daily worship of her Lord.
But because the relationship of expertise to Mother Church's substantial reality is one of covenantal subsidiarity, then expertise is not subsumable into the "higher" reality: Mother Church is radically unable to be an expert or to fulfill the role of an expert. Expertise is not contemptible, not irrelevant, not dispensable; though "lesser," expertise has ineradicable authority and dignity of its own.
Any Catholic, possessing the truth in ecclesia as gift, may seek to "understand in ecclesia ever more fully the mystery mediated there, a mystery which we cannot comprehend, but from which we may learn forever," [ CT II, Epilogue, p. 652 ].
Nor do covenantal moral theologies restrict 'learning' exclusively to the intellectual plane: Mother Teresa had no advanced degree in theological science, but who can deny that her decades-long, patient, faithful, 'learning' regarding some aspects of the Catholic Faith was far superior to ours?
The saints -- their lives both on earth and in heaven -- are gifts; the saints themselves are the kind of 'book' Mother Church, and we ourselves, actually can consult, to learn how to know as they know.
As Fr. Keefe once wrote, "The bishops are not magicians" ["A Review and Critique of the C.T.S.A. 'Report'," ibid. ] -- they do not and cannot pull their judgments out of thin air. The gifts and works of all honest believing Catholics past and present may serve as part of the humble matter that contributes to episcopal discernment.
And it might be an understatement to say that it is dangerous to rely on the judgments of bishops, who may be the humblest of humble matter themselves. Yet the Lord Himself from the beginning relied on them and always will, extravagantly and ever.
For the popes have been right all along: the Church can and must defend her worship, her sacraments, her children in this world of sticks and stones -- even though, as herself, she is not expert even at that.
And despite Mother Church having to forego all claims to expertise, her Lord gave her all manner of power utterly unavailable to expertise: power to "do this in memory of Me;" to preach the gospel to all nations; to baptize in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit; to invite all to the kinship history of sacraments, beliefs, and gifts, works, and obligations that is The Way.
It comes down to this: either the sacraments are real, and in actual concrete history with all its ravages and dissolutions, sinful human beings, true adopted kin of the Bridegroom with His bride -- despite their failings, despite their errors -- are able to mediate the continuing work in history of the risen Christ with His bride; or the sacraments are not real, and they cannot.
Regarding anything more than what is written here, we must await a day (if it ever comes) when sufficient understanding is given.
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