The New Donatists

Where’s St. Augustine When You Need Him? The bishop who told Rod Dreher to get lost must lack acquaintance with the Church’s long-standing teaching on unworthy ministers. The teaching goes back at least as far as the controversy between St. Augustine and an puritanical African schismatic sect called the Donatists.

The Donatists claimed that the essence of the Church consisted in the holiness and purity of its membership. The consequence of this claim is a strict puritanism for the clergy because it would make the validity of the sacraments depend upon the worthiness of the administrator.

This is a highly creditable mistake, a noble desire to see the membership of the Church rise to perfection. And this is where it goes wrong, as St. Augustine saw it. The Donatist position is a doctrine of the perfection of man that would deny that all share in the common sinfulness. What’s more, it mislocates the source of the efficacy of the sacraments, which rests not in the purity of priests but on Divine institution and the merits of Christ. Unworthy priests cannot stand in the way of signs ordained by Christ to produce grace.

The bishop in Rod Dreher’s story puts forth a hyper-Donatism that would delegitimize the entire Church because of the corruption of certain men. As Lawrence Auster pointed out, this implies the absence of Divine institution. There is a word we use to describe the sort of thing this bishop does when he makes personality of bishops, rather than the truth, the relevant test for the legitimacy of the Church. That word is pride.

Bishops like these give the act of defending orthodoxy all the thrill of inventing heresy.

Posted by at June 13, 2002 05:14 PM | Send