Whispers in the Wasteland

Who needs a Pope?

Islam apparently does. Jonah Goldberg links to Edward Feser's Does Islam Need a Luther or a Pope?, and reminds everyone that he had already expounded on the topic in Islamic Rites.

I enjoyed Mr. Goldberg's piece, and I even wrote him a nice short note stating so. Edward Feser's piece goes into greater detail, and I'd say he's spot on except for one important detail... the conclusion. Mr. Feser goes on in great detail describing the similarities between Protestantism and Islam, and then concludes that Islam needs a pope. This flaw is not apparent in this long (but not long-winded) piece, but there you are: a religion very much like Protestantism needs a pope.

If Protestantism were to have a pope, it would no longer be Protestantism. It would change its essential characteristic. I mentioned this before about Islam in Whispers in the Wasteland:

And yet a separation of mosque and state could be effected simply by giving Islam a pope, who would by papal decree declare all the unpleasant bits to be null and void. If I were a more cynical type, I would say, "hey guys, that's a neat plan for destroying Islam with modernism," but sadly I think these guys honestly believe that this is how religions "evolve." Sadly, they miss the parts about the authority of tradition, and how the Koran itself is the source of that authority. And they misunderstand the authority of popes as well as the sources of authority in their own traditions.

I'm in agreement with Mr. Feser when he states that the status of the Koran in Islam is very much the same as the status of Bible in some forms of Protestantism under the doctrine of sola scriptura. The fundamental problem with the Koran is that there is no scriptural support for a Pope (as far as I know). In the Koran, the secular and religious leader Muhammad was the last prophet and there is no basis for papal authority or for the separation of secular and religious authority. I have claimed and will continue to claim that authority springs from Tradition (I touch on this partly here in By What Authority?). A pope imposed on Islam is an innovation that will destory Islam, unless they find some way to torture the text of the Koran support it.

Feser describes the very essense of Catholic authority:

The authority of councils and Popes is at bottom merely the authority of the night watchman who guards a museum whose works he could not have created himself, and would not presume to tamper with. The teachings of a Pope are never strictly his teachings, but merely those of the 2,000-year old institution of which he is a temporary steward and to which he must submit as dutifully as any of the faithful. Far from being an arbitrary despot, he is merely the servant and executor of a system of law he did not make and cannot change. He is, one might say, the very model of the Hayekian statesman, transplanted into the sphere of religion.

Conversely, Feser identifies the fatal flaw in Protestantism (and by implication, Islam), "The Bible ends up saying whatever the individual believer thinks it says -- however ill-educated or bigoted that believer might be, and whatever extra-Biblical agenda he may unconsciously be reading into it. Every man becomes, in practice, his own authority -- which means, in effect, that there is no authority at all." The Islamic extremes such as Wahhabism have just as much claim to legitimacy as any Protestant sect has.

Recently, I've been attacking just this sort of egalitarianism with respect to chess and music (see here and here). The truth is that elites will fill the void, but those elites are just as likely to be charlatans as the real thing. People will coalesce around experts, real or fake, because they've no way, no grounding to discern the good from the bad. That includes politics and religion as well as chess and music (Note: I've pointed out before, and would like to point out again, Secret Agent Man's posting and explication of Orestes Brownson's essay, "Catholicity Necessary to Sustain Popular Liberty" which is well worth a read, and be sure to read Balint Vazsonyi's Men for All Seasons).

So after a fashion, I agree with Goldberg and Feser, but I would go farther. As a Catholic, I'm obviously biased, and I would say that the whole world needs a pope, the Catholic Pope. When Vladimir Soloviev from the Russian Orthodox Church embraced the Catholic Church he did not see himself repudiating Orthodoxy. Father Ryland explains, "He did not regard this as abandoning his ties with the Russian Church, but rather as their fulfillment." In the same sense, Judaism is fulfilled by Christianity. In the same sense, former Protestants like Mark Shea see their Evangelical background fulfilled by their Catholicism. And since Catholic apologist and writer Hilaire Belloc saw Islam as a Christian heresy, after a fashion (if you squint your eyes really tight) Islam might also be seen to be fulfilled by Catholicism.

Lest my Protestant brothers get the wrong idea that I believe them all to be wrong-headed heretics, I should point out that I appreciate that it was those Puritan-Calvinists who sought to establish that "city upon a hill," and when it came to that just separation from the British Empire, the Enlightenment was grounded by the Great Awakening. Jonathan Edwards essentially got that ball rolling and US News seems to have done a pretty fair essay on him and his heirs.

[This was first posted at GIGO]