15th Sunday of the Year (C)

The title of the fifth book of the Bible, Deuteronomy, is the combination of two Greek words meaning “another” or “second” law. Today’s First Reading is taken from the conclusion of this “second law”, and, there, Moses’ speech suggests that the People of God have accepted the law he has spoken to them and must now put into practice what they have been given: the law “is something very near to you,” Moses assures them, it is “already in your mouths and in your hearts; you have only to carry it out.” 

Every Sunday, the Church, the new People of God, gathers to listen to God’s law proclaimed to them with the expectation and command that they will “go forth” from the Mass to put what they have received into action. Yet practicing God’s law presumes the People have accepted it; and as even the smallest degree of awareness indicates, like Israel of old, some Catholics today struggle to accept what the Church teaches, particularly on issues of morality. Rather than being “near” to them and “already in” their mouths and hearts, these teachings sometimes seem rather to be “up in the sky”, soaring over and above the challenges of worldly living, or “across the sea”, belonging to a time and a culture not our own.

What underlies many people’s struggle to accept the Church’s teaching, on any issue, is a disposition by which they have fundamentally closed themselves off to receive it; and if this disposition is not addressed and challenged then one may not only find it difficult but even impossible to ever come around to accept these teachings. We see this exact disposition on display in the Gospel, in the scholar “who stood up to test Jesus” about the law’s correct interpretation and, after finding Jesus’ answer unsatisfactory, “wished to justify himself” and pressed Jesus further. In short, the scholar who approaches Jesus is predisposed to doubt. He does not come to Jesus to be instructed, to have his knowledge completed, his opinions challenged, or his ignorance corrected; rather, he tests Jesus to find a contradiction, an inconsistency, within Jesus’ teaching that would justify himself in dismissing him as an illegitimate rabbi. Before even speaking a word, the scholar has made up his mind that what Jesus will say is untrue. 

People today often object that, if only Jesus were still on earth and we could go to him, as did this scholar of the law, every question could be settled once and for all. Then, and only then, would we know exactly how Jesus wants us to live. What this fails to grasp, however, is that Jesus is still on earth, and his teaching remains accessible to all through the Church he himself established, for the Church speaks with the very authority of Christ. Saint John Henry Newman clearly described the nature and origin of the Church’s teaching: “No one can be a Catholic without a simple faith, that what the Church declares in God’s name, is God’s word, and therefore true.”[1]

To lack such faith that what the Church teaches is true is what Newman calls doubt. Doubt presumes that the Catechism is filled with nothing but the opinions of men and weighs those opinions against all others as equals. But the authority on which the Church’s teaching rests has no equal, for it comes from God – God who is Truth itself (cf. Jn. 14:6) – and who is therefore incapable of error or deception. For this reason (and for this reason alone) what the Church teaches definitively is infallible, as the Holy Spirit leads the Church, as Christ promised, “into all truth” (Jn. 16:13). 

Considering the teaching of the Church to be anything less is to entertain doubt. According to Newman, doubt can take a variety of forms. Doubt is most obvious when one clearly states they do not believe a particular teaching to be true. But doubt can also be the kind of conditional belief in which one remains open to being convinced otherwise: I believe in this now, but if I hear a better argument later, I might change my mind. In the same vein, one can also doubt by holding to a belief for the time being with the hope that it will change in the future: I accept the Church’s teaching because it is the Church’s teaching, but the Church needs to get with the times and update its doctrine. Each of these dispositions falls under the category of doubt because they presume that the Church teaches at the level of human opinion and, as opinion, is prone to error. 

Newman’s words are certainly sobering and challenging; and it may seem as if he would have us simply submit to all that the Church teaches without any further inquiry. But this is far from the truth. Newman makes a helpful distinction between the disposition of doubt and the phenomenon of difficulty – and the difference between them is enormous. While the one who doubts presumes that what the Church is not true and then searches for reasons to prove it such, the one who has difficulties begins with belief in the Church’s teachings and then, from a position of belief, struggles to understand their full meaning. It is the difference between the scholar who approaches Jesus in a spirit of presumption and self-righteousness and the faith of the father who sees but does not understand how Jesus has delivered his son of a demon and says, “I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mk. 9:24). 

Newman allows us to see that, while there is not a place within the Church for doubt, there is plenty of room within the Church for difficulty. The obedience of faith “to submit freely to the word that has been heard, because its truth is guaranteed by God, who is Truth itself” is required of every Catholic.[2] Yet, as faith seeks understanding, the one who believes in God and what God has revealed may have to work through many difficulties to understand and love the truth of what God speaks through the Church. Yet this the believer does with a disposition of openness, docility, and humility; and this disposition is so completely opposed to doubt that Newman famously said: “Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt.”[3]

To move from doubt to difficulty first requires the recognition that God’s law is, as Moses foretold, already within us. On the day of our baptism, we received the gift of faith, and by that gift, God has written his law upon our hearts (cf. Jer. 31:33). On account of our pride, we feel that his law is something distant and outside of us, but it has, on the contrary, been inscribed in the depth of our being and can never be taken away. God’s law, however, is not a list of rules to follow but a person, the divine person of the Holy Spirit, who dwells within us. The one who doubts needs only to look within, to the Lord who has united them completely and personally with himself and pray with sincerity, “I believe; help my unbelief.” This is the first step: to pray for an increase of faith. 

When one has arrived at the stage of difficulty, they must continue to press onward, as remaining obstinate in one’s difficulties is another subtle form of doubt. One must work to resolve their difficulties, and they should do so by making use of the means the Church puts at their disposal. John Henry Newman himself, once a prominent Anglican theologian and Oxford professor, worked through his difficulties with the Roman Church through his assiduous study of the Church Fathers. Many converts and lapsed Catholics have found new life through the writings of the great teachers who worked through the same difficulties for themselves. 

We strive to make such opportunities available here at the Cathedral. This month, there are over 70 people studying Joseph Ratzinger’s Spirit of the Liturgy with me on Saturday mornings – and I look forward to offering more Catholic 301 courses throughout the year. Our Cathedral staff is likewise working to provide you with online resources that you can access and view from home to nourish your faith. We hope to make those available to you very soon. Many Catholic podcasters and YouTube creators put out creative and engaging content to address the most pressing questions that cause difficulty. And all of this, and so much more, is done with the firm belief that Christ is present in and through his Church, that the Church speaks with the authority of Christ, and that what the Church teaches is true and good for us. 

Whether in one doubt or in ten thousand difficulties, God desires all his people “to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:4). And God, who is Truth himself, does not fail to speak and work through the Church to offer the gift of salvation that comes through faith. He has gathered us here in his presence today to hear his word once again – to come to know and to love his law written upon our hearts – and thus find in him the certainty of its truth and the conviction necessary to carry it out. 

[1] John Henry Newman, “Faith and Doubt” in Discourses Addressed to Mixed Congregations.

[2] Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 144. 

[3] John Henry Newman, Apologia pro vita sua.