Tea at Trianon: A Cardinal Misunderstanding of the Hierarchy of Truths

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Thursday, February 23, 2023

A Cardinal Misunderstanding of the Hierarchy of Truths

From Catholic World Report:

Catholic media has been reacting the last two weeks to Cardinal McElroy’s recent piece on synodality and “radical inclusivism” in the Church. Responding to some of his critics, his Eminence appeared on the America magazine podcast “Jesuitical: A Podcast for Young Catholics” to explain his views more fully. Part of Cardinal McElroy’s clarifications about both his article and the general contention among Cardinals included the concept of the “hierarchy of truths.” He used this concept to position the subject matter of his article—LGBT, women’s roles in the Church, etc.—as part of a debate of truths that are of “much less important” when compared to “those elements at the heart of the Gospel.”

My focus here is not those specific topics and debates over them. What I will point out is that whatever the merits or weaknesses of his positions on those contentious issues, McElroy’s use of the concept of the “hierarchy of truths” is at best misleading and even very inaccurate. In fact, McElroy appears to be under the common but erroneous impression that the hierarchy of truths is a categorization of Church teaching in which the unquestionable, most certain truths are at the top, while the less certain and more debatable “truths” are at the bottom (and those we can bandy about, though whether indefinitely or not is not clear from his commentary).

If this is what McElroy means, he is mistaken. The hierarchy of truths is not a classification of levels of certainty or importance, but rather an expression of the analogy of faith—the Regula Fidei—that illustrates how the various true doctrines and propositions of Church teaching relate 1) to each other and 2) to the most fundamental or central truths of the Faith on which they are based and from which they flow. (Read more.)