On the Objective Character of Ecclesiastical Discipline

As a reflection of the image of God, the rational and social nature of the human being manifests itself in the establishment of societies which are governed by laws. People come into the world within the context of family, as no one can be born without two parents. This family, being an imperfect society which does not possess all the powers within itself to direct its members to their proper end, is then directed to two perfect societies, civil and ecclesiastical, which in turn direct individuals and families to their natural and supernatural ends, respectively. While God has established divine law, it remains general in its formulations, and to illustrate the dignity of man above the other animals, He leaves it up to human leaders to draw up and promulgate laws to govern these societies in accordance with the general principles contained in divine law. In this way, rational and social beings play an active part in bringing about their own flourishing, in both the natural and supernatural orders.

The fact that man, who is himself fallen and lives in a fallen world, must use his intellect to participate in the governance of creation raises several important considerations. Because human intellects are limited, given that the darkening of the intellect was one of the consequences of original sin, it follows that no purely man-made law should ever be treated as an absolute rule obliging under all times and circumstances. No legislator can “foresee all the individual cases to which his law will be applied,” which in some instances may cause “unforeseen cases…which agree neither with the intent of the lawgiver nor with natural justice, but rather contravene them.”¹ In addition to situations in which human lawgivers attempt to promulgate laws which are themselves unjust, there can also be laws which, while just under a certain set of conditions, end up becoming unjust when those conditions change. When faced with such a situation, one must follow the spirit of the law rather than the letter.²

Although human laws play a role in directing the members of society to their ultimate good, which is God, and thus establish a link between the natural and supernatural orders, they are nevertheless operative in the temporal order and subject to the limitations imposed by time and space within a world governed by potency and act. As circumstances change, laws which were appropriate in the past may become inappropriate or even simply unjust in the present and future, thus necessitating reevaluation and revision from time to time. This mutability requires successive generations to study the reasons for which their ancestors established order in the manner that they did and make any necessary changes, thus creating a continuous engagement across history of human reason with the divine plan.

In the context of ecclesiastical society, however, there is another reason for this mutability: as laws change and adapt over time through a process of organic development, the divine institution of the Church is made manifest to the world. Such development provides visible, tangible proof of the guidance of the Holy Ghost, showing the abundant fruits borne from human cooperation with divine grace. The changeability of discipline was not established to give human legislators free rein to do whatever they wish, as though canon law were only a matter of governing mundane administrative things and had no supernatural end. That type of relativism leads directly to positivism: if all disciplines are of equal value because they are man-made and changeable, then one can only conclude that the current law is what it is, with no questions permitted, and so merely human authority becomes the supreme arbiter of justice in place of God. Ironically enough, the relativization and excessive mutation of discipline ultimately leads to the arbitrary and tyrannical imposition of human law as though human authority could ever be absolute.

Both these errors of relativism and absolutism derive from the same root, namely, naturalism, which cuts human law off from divine law by ignoring the supernatural order. On the contrary, by regarding God rather than man as the supreme lawgiver, the true Catholic simultaneously recognizes the limits of merely human law as well as its true dignity, grounded as it should be in divine law and the supernatural character of the Church herself. When something new is introduced in ecclesiastical discipline, he looks to the process of organic development to determine whether this change is an authentic continuation of this development or a harmful novelty. Not all ecclesiastical disciplines are equal simply because discipline can change. There is, in fact, an objective standard: those laws which stand the test of time are to be regarded as more pleasing to God than their alternatives, because those which are less pleasing to God are gradually eradicated over the course of the centuries. If God did not promulgate ecclesiastical laws directly but left it to human intellects, it was precisely to manifest the divine institution of the Church despite all the prudential missteps made by mere men.

Once an earlier practice has been universally superseded by a new one which in turn lasts longer than the old, one may conclude with theological certitude that an irreversible development through the filtering of time has occurred, making it impermissible to return to the earlier practice. This means that in some cases, one law may in fact be objectively superior to another, without regard for future changes in circumstances. For example, many theologians today would argue that both communion on the tongue and communion in the hand are equally acceptable practices if they have both been “approved” by the ecclesiastical authorities, thus making the Church’s preference for communion on the tongue prior to the mid-twentieth century a question of little importance. However, the history behind how she came to prefer one over another illustrates that there is an objective standard that renders communion on the tongue superior, thus making disciplinary relativism untenable.

Now one certainly cannot say that communion in the hand is inherently sacrilegious, given that it was practiced in the early Church. In antiquity, the faithful would clean their hands before receiving in the right—rather than the left—hand, and in some places, a cloth was used to cover the hand and prevent the loss of particles. After consuming the Host directly from the palm without picking It up with their fingers, they would then check their hands or the cloth for particles and consume those as well. These precautions showed that early Christians approached the reception of communion with a reverence that modern Christians often lack, given that they now receive communion without washing their hands before or purifying them afterward to avoid accidental profanation. Yet even if modern Christians adopted the precautions used in antiquity, it would still not follow that communion in the hand could ever be an equal practice to communion on the tongue, because the Church realized over the centuries that communion on the tongue is much more effective at protecting the dignity of the Eucharist.

There is evidence that communion on the tongue originated as far back in time as the Apostles themselves, but even granting the questionable narrative of modern historians who insist that communion in the hand was widespread in the early Church, one must still conclude that the eventual and universal eradication of this practice over the centuries, along with the fact that communion on the tongue subsequently lasted longer than communion in the hand did and was universally observed in the Latin Church until the mid-twentieth century, proves that organic development took place for a reason. Thus, one can say with theological certitude that communion on the tongue is objectively superior to communion in the hand, even practiced in the reverent, non-sacrilegious manner of the early Church, because the Holy Ghost guides the Church even in matters which are prudential in nature. To relegate the debate on the method of receiving the Eucharist to the realm of arbitrary personal preferences not based in theological reasoning reveals a naturalistic, relativistic mentality contrary to the authentic Catholic spirit.

While ecclesiastical discipline, at least insofar as its proximate cause is considered, is made by mere human intellects and changeable according to time and circumstances, there still is an objective standard by which members of the Church can come to recognize that some laws are simply superior to others. To determine that a development of discipline has become fixed and unchangeable according to the method presented above is not to absolutize or divinize a merely human act, but to recognize that once God has made it clear that it was He who inspired the human development, there is nothing left for man to do but to humbly submit and accept it. The Catholic who seeks to submit his mind to the Church must adopt not the idea that “anything goes” simply because discipline is not doctrine, but must recognize that whatever law has stood the test of time must be considered objectively superior to its alternatives—for the discipline that arose as a result of the Church’s increasingly mature reflection on how to effectively express sacred doctrine must be superior to less mature, earlier practices.

1. V. Cathrein, “Law,” The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 9 (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1910), https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09053a.htm.

2. For more information on this particular issue, see D. Ludwig-Wang, “The SSPX: A True Response to the Abuse of Authority,” The 1568 Project with Dorothea Ludwig-Wang, 28 November 2023, https://dorothealudwigwang.com/p/sspx.