So-Called Intellectual Suicide - Introduction

A standard canard for many Protestants when quarreling with Catholics is that we have committed "intellectual suicide" by submitting to the Magisterium. These critics say this because it seems to them that if anyone refuses to question what the critics describe as merely human declarations, this can only mean that he has abandoned any genuine prospect for independent thought. This assertion has come up on a couple different blogs recently, in response to philosopher Dr. Robert Koons' announcement of his intention to convert to the Catholic Church.

In one venue, a commenter says of such conversions: "So it really is intellectual suicide on the order of what geocentrist fundamentalists ask of people." Elsewhere, in response to a Catholic's expressed admiration for an article by Dr. Koons on the subject of justification, a critic says:

I know for a fact that you don't really care anything about Dr. Koons' "excellent treatise on justification". You can't. You're Catholic...

It's not "what you think" but "whom do you trust?"

It isn't about what Dr. Koons thinks. You don't trust Dr. Koons. You can't. No matter how smart he may or may not be, he is just some guy with an opinion.

Unfortunately, it seems that these gentlemen do not seem to have understood things clearly.

In the first place, as someone else pointed out on the first of these two blogs, the claim that Catholics commit intellectual suicide is simply absurd on its face, given converts such as these and other Catholics such as St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Thomas More, and Joseph Ratzinger (to name just a few). Such silliness hardly warrants a response, in one sense, because it is so manifestly at variance with the facts.

In the second place, these critics really ought to be wary of resorting to such attacks. What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, and if this sort of nonsense "works" against Catholics, it works no less well against Protestants in the hands of (for example) atheists. Atheists will say that Christians blindly accept what the Bible says, so that by becoming Christian we have all committed intellectual suicide. Here is just one example. A little more caution would seem to be in order: glass houses, stones, and all that.

But in the third place, it seems that these Protestant critics do not understand some things about the relationship of dogma, theology, and reason in general. In my next post, I hope to explain why Catholics have most certainly not jettisoned their brains at the church door.