A Hierarchy of Truths

I studied sacred theology and canon law at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome in the late 80’s and early 90’s, and although all lectures were in Italian, seminars were conducted in many languages. Students came from all around the world and were free to choose a seminar each year according to language and topic, and in my third year of theology, I took a seminar on ecclesiology (doctrine of the Church) which was taught by an American professor in English. Most of the students in that seminar were native English speakers, but we were joined by three German students all of whom spoke English beautifully, with the idiomatic ease and complete fluidity of dedicated scholars.

Among the documents we studied together was the Decree on Ecumenism of the Second Vatican Council which is called Unitatis Redentegratio. And in explaining how Catholic theologians should approach the work of fruitful conversation with non-Catholic Christian thinkers, the Council made this observation: “In ecumenical dialogue, Catholic theologians standing fast by the teaching of the Church and investigating divine mysteries with the separated brethren must proceed with love for the truth, with charity, and with humility. When comparing doctrines with one another they should remember that in Catholic doctrine there exists a ‘hierarchy’ of truths, since they vary in their relation to the fundamental Christian faith.” (UR, 11)

The phrase “hierarchy of truths” was intended by the Council to signify that while everything revealed by God is true, not everything in divine revelation is equally central to the Paschal Mystery of Jesus Christ, and so it is legitimate in ecumenical dialogue to make distinctions between the doctrines that are central to the Gospel and those that are also true but less central. For example, we know from Holy Scripture that the Lord Jesus was conceived without a human father, and we know by the Apostolic Tradition that Christ’s mother Mary had no children other than the Lord Jesus. But the virginal conception of the Eternal Word is more central to the Paschal Mystery than is the perpetual virginity of his holy Mother, and therefore it follows that no Catholic theologian must ask a Protestant theologian to assent to our teaching that Mary had no children other than Jesus as a condition for their ecumenical conversation.

But that understanding of the “hierarchy of truths” was not shared by the German students in our seminar. They immediately concluded from this phrase that the Catholic Church acknowledges that not all doctrines are equally true, and if some doctrines are less true that others, then it is possible to question, undermine, and finally deny some or all of the secondary or tertiary “truths” without in any way denying the central truth of the Christian faith. Once it became clear that the German students held the “hierarchy of truths” to mean something other than what the Council taught, the seminar descended into raucous debate, and even a mild-mannered Jesuit professor not known for insisting on doctrinal orthodoxy was left shaking his head in wonderment at the relativism and historicism from which the German students perceived and analyzed everything.

In the months since the German Synodal Way began to demand that the Church change her teaching on the sacraments of Orders and Marriage and the character of same sex romantic friendship, I have thought many times of those very bright German seminarians and the legion of others just like them who now serve as bishops and priests in Germany. When the Zeitgeist rejects the Christian faith as implausible or unjust or superstitious, then thinkers who regard some doctrines as less true than others will seek to abandon the secondary or tertiary teachings in the hope of preserving what is central to the Paschal Mystery, but since the hierarchy of truths does not mean that some doctrines are less true than others, rejecting any part of “the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 1:3) compromises the witness and integrity of the Church which in fidelity to the Great Commission must proclaim without shame that the entire Gospel is “the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.” (Romans 1:16)

My German classmates at the Gregorian University were serious scholars and gave every sign of being serious Christian disciples, but their intellectual formation left them ill equipped to refute the skepticism, relativism, and cynicism of our age with the complete confidence and transcendent joy which moved Saint Paul to write “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” (Romans 12:1-2)