Fr. Aidan Nichols Criticises the Critics

A talk which Fr. Aidan Nichols OP gave to the society a few years ago has appeared in print as Chapter I of his most recent book 'Criticising the Critics'.  The chapter is titled 'For Modernists' - not, we hope, a reference to its original audience!

In this book, Fr Aidan Nichols O.P. turns his attention onto contemporary critics of the Catholic Church: those who are inspired by modernist rationalism to reject the supernatural; those who regard the New Age as an acceptable surrogate for the Christian doctrine of salvation; academic theologians who reject the historical and biblical basis for Christianity. Also coming under scrutiny are feminists who see the Church as an expression of a patriarchal society; Protestants who play down Christ’s nature as a priest; progressive Catholics who hesitate about proclaiming the Gospel of Life; those who regard the Church’s sexual ethics as ‘unrealistic’, and critics of Fr Nichols' book The Realm.

Copies can be ordered from Family Publications.

Content:
Preface . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1. For Modernists . . . . .  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2. For Neo-Gnostics . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . .29
3. For Academic Exegetes . . . . . . . . . . . . .51
4. For Feminists . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
5. For Liberal Protestants . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
6. For Progressive Catholics . . . . .  . . . . .103
7. For the Erotically Absorbed . . . .  . . . .121
8. For Critics of Christendom . . .. . .  . . . 137
Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .157

Preface:

Catholicism — and the Catholic Church at each stage of her history — is always well supplied with critics. When the Church is not all she should be — morally, intellectually, pastorally, aesthetically — such critics will often have useful points to make. And whenever, we may ask, is she all that she should be, short of the Parousia?

Critics essentially both benign and right-thinking are not, however, the only kind of critics that exist. Others, far from benign, may well be intemperate, even irrational, in their passions. Others again, possibly benign, offer their criticisms — whether from without or within — owing to a failure to grasp certain aspects of Catholic truth. This last category includes the critics this book has it in mind to criticise in turn.

I offer here a series of apologias for different facets of the truth of faith and morals held by the Church. The apologias are, it may be said, ill-assorted, and I can hardly deny the claim. It is part and parcel of the present conjuncture that intellectual assaults come from very different quarters at one and the same time. Those considered here are by no means all there are, but they are among those I personally have encountered and sought to answer. The audiences have been very varied — the Oxford Newman Society (Chapter 1); the annual conference of Kirkelig Fornyelse, the umbrella organisation of catholicising movements in Christianity in Norway (Chapter 2); the Walsingham Retreat of the (Anglican) Federation of Catholic Priests (Chapter 3); a summer school of (what became) the International Institute for Culture at Eichstatt in Bavaria (Chapter 4); the international bi-lateral dialogue of the Catholic Church with the Disciples of Christ at Klosterneuburg in Austria (Chapter 5); a day of recollection of the Association of Priests for the Gospel of Life (Chapter 6); a conference to the young clergy of the Giffard Society (Chapter 7); the Craigmyle lecture of the Catholic Union (Chapter 8).

With the partial exception of the opening chapter, I have not spent a great deal of time in describing the positions I oppose. I have preferred to concentrate on the positive exposition of Catholic truth. Each chapter might be described as a quid pro quo, an offering appropriate, in its own way, to each of the categories of person involved. Readers of The Lord of the Rings may recall how, after his ‘eleventy-first’ birthday party, Bilbo Baggins left a set of carefully selected and labelled packages for various miscreant family members and friends. Clearing out the hobbit-hole of my room, these essays serve mutatis mutandis a like end.

Finally, I would like to thank Fr Vivian Boland, of the Order of Preachers, for contributing a number of helpful suggestions and corrections.

Blackfriars, Cambridge
Memorial day of St Francis Xavier, 2009

Hat tip: In Hoc Est Veritas.