Theology without a Church Or Speaking Ex Cathedra from the Keyboard

​I recently read a report in the National Catholic Reporter about Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. Opening the dicastery’s plenary session, Fernández warned that anyone can now publish an opinion online and condemn others “as if speaking ex cathedra,” even when the writer has studied little theology. (National Catholic Reporter⁠)

It is an irresistible line. Anyone who has spent much time reading religious commentary online will recognize the phenomenon. The internet has produced an astonishing number of self-appointed guardians of orthodoxy. They possess no ecclesiastical office, sometimes little theological education, and almost never any pastoral responsibility for the people they judge. Yet they speak with a certainty that would make an ecumenical council appear indecisive.

Fernández’s complaint could easily be dismissed as the irritation of an institutional authority confronted by unofficial critics. He has, after all, frequently been the object of such criticism. But his meditation was not primarily a defense of the Vatican. He began instead with an appeal to intellectual humility: ubi humilitas, ibi sapientia—where there is humility, there is wisdom. Even the theologian, he observed, normally knows only one part of a much larger field. The mysteries of the faith are connected to one another, and no individual possesses an exhaustive knowledge of the whole. (Vatican⁠)

The problem, then, is not simply that blogs sometimes get things wrong. The problem is a way of imagining theological authority.

Digital media encourages us to confuse visibility with authority. A large audience appears to validate the speaker. Repetition begins to resemble tradition. Confidence takes the place of competence. The ability to render an immediate judgment is mistaken for the capacity to exercise discernment.

The incentives of the medium make matters worse. Qualification does not travel as quickly as certainty. Patience does not attract as much attention as outrage. A carefully developed argument, filled with distinctions and acknowledgments of uncertainty, is unlikely to circulate as widely as a declaration that a bishop is a heretic, a theologian has abandoned the faith, or an entire denomination is no longer Christian.

The internet did not invent these habits. Christians have always been capable of confusing their own judgments with the judgment of God. The internet merely places a publishing house in every pocket and makes the temptation available at all hours.

There is, however, something more serious at work. Online theological pronouncements often occur outside the relationships that ordinarily make Christian speech accountable. The writer may condemn a priest without knowing the congregation that priest serves. The commentator may dismiss a pastoral decision without having met the people affected by it. Someone may pronounce upon a theological dispute without having read the books, encountered the traditions, or listened to the communities involved.

This is theology without a church.

Christian theology has never been merely the production of correct propositions by isolated minds. It arises from the worship, Scripture, memory, argument, suffering, and common life of the Church. It is tested in conversation with the dead and the living. It is accountable to communities that must actually live with its consequences.

That does not mean only bishops or professional theologians may speak. The Church needs unofficial voices. Laypeople, journalists, independent scholars, parish clergy, and outsiders often perceive what institutions are unable—or unwilling—to see. Ecclesiastical office does not guarantee wisdom, and academic credentials do not produce humility. History supplies more than enough examples of well-educated and properly authorized people speaking foolishly.

The issue is not who may speak. The issue is whether Christian speech remains accountable.

There is a difference between making a theological argument and issuing a theological decree. An argument gives reasons. It identifies its sources. It recognizes contrary evidence. It remains open to correction. A decree merely announces the boundaries of faith and assigns everyone to the proper side.

Much religious commentary adopts the form of a decree while possessing none of the relationships, learning, or responsibility that might give such a decree authority.

The title of Fernández’s meditation was “Do Not Ask the Light, but the Fire.” That title suggests a deeper criticism of contemporary theology. We often seek the light of intellectual mastery without the fire of divine love. We want to see clearly enough to classify, separate, and condemn. We are less eager to be consumed and transformed by the God about whom we speak.

Saint Paul understood the distinction: “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up” (1 Corinthians 8:1). Paul was not opposing knowledge. He was opposing knowledge severed from charity and therefore detached from the body it was meant to serve.

Fernández connected intellectual humility with the Catholic Church’s continuing turn toward synodality. Pope Leo XIV has described a synodal Church as one that does not close in upon itself but remains attentive to God and therefore able to listen to others. He has also said that no one possesses the whole truth and that Christians must seek it together. (Vatican⁠)

Anglicans should recognize something of our own tradition in that description. Anglican theology has never rested comfortably in one location. Authority is exercised through Scripture, tradition, reason, worship, episcopal oversight, scholarly inquiry, and the reception of the faithful. The result is often untidy. Yet that untidiness may protect us from the fantasy that one bishop, one theologian, one party, or one website possesses the mind of Christ entire.

Synodality, at its best, does not mean that every opinion is equally true. Nor does listening require the abandonment of doctrine. Listening is part of the discipline by which doctrine is received, interpreted, and lived. It requires the possibility that the Holy Spirit may speak through someone we had not expected to hear.

The great danger of online theology is not merely error. Error can be corrected. The greater danger is the formation of people who no longer believe they need correction—people whose certainty has isolated them from the Church while persuading them that they alone are defending it.

Fernández’s warning should therefore not silence theological debate. We need more serious argument, not less. We need critics willing to challenge institutions and institutions willing to listen to critics. But we also need the virtues without which Christian argument becomes another form of domination: patience, charity, intellectual discipline, accountability, and humility.

The proper opposite of reckless theological speech is not silence. It is speech formed within communion.

Speak, certainly. Argue vigorously. Criticize when necessary. But study before condemning. Listen before pronouncing judgment. Distinguish conviction from infallibility. And remember that Christian theology is not merely an attempt to speak correctly about God. It is the practice of learning to speak truthfully before God and responsibly to one another.