American Pope

Scott Hahn and the Rise of Catholic Fundamentalism

Sean Swain Martin

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781666723359
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Denominations

As arguably the most influential voice in American Catholicism, the vision that Scott Hahn offers in his works, read by millions of Catholics throughout the world, is one of the most formative in American Catholicism. His numerous books and public speaking engagements are shaping the American Catholic Church in a uniquely powerful manner. This work demonstrates that the Catholic vision that Hahn claims to be providing his audience is, in fact, always quite different from the one he actually presents. What he coins as Catholic faithfulness is instead a straightforward and damning Catholic fundamentalism. As this vision is delivered to millions of the faithful who look to Hahn as a trustworthy guide to an authentic life of Catholic faith, American Pope acts as a critical analysis of his work.

1

The Life and Thought of Scott Walker Hahn

The history of Catholic thought is full of powerful stories of conversion and transformation but none, perhaps, is so well-known as that of St. Augustine of Hippo. Born in northern Africa in AD 354 to a pagan father, Patricius, and a Christian mother, Monica, the young Augustine inhabited two very different worlds. While offered a Christian education and initiation,1 the young Augustine looked more like his non-believing father than his saintly mother. Despite his Christian formation, Augustine was also greatly influenced by his father, who encouraged him to give himself over to sexual desires and pagan thought. While never completely abandoning his Christian formation, Augustine sank deeply into adolescent sin and pride:

Around me lay the quagmire of carnal desire, bubbling with the springs of pubescence, and breathing a mist that left my heart fog-bound and benighted; I could no longer tell the clear skies of love from the dark clouds of lust. The two swirled around me in confusion; and in my youthful ignorance I was quickly drawn over the cliffs of desire and sucked down by the eddying currents of vice. . . . I was seething with fornications; overflowing, spilling out, boiling over. O my Joy at last! You said nothing then, as I wandered further and further from you, sowing more and more seeds that would yield no harvest but sorrows.2

He finally abandons the path of righteousness at the now infamous pear trees, from which he and his friends stole the fruit only to throw the pears away. This moment stood out for Augustine in that it was the first time that he could remember choosing sin simply for the sake of being sinful. “My evil was loathsome, and I loved it,” he confessed, “I was in love with my own ruin and rebellion.”3 Yet, while he had abandoned God, God had not abandoned him, though it would take a long and painful path back for Augustine to see it.

In order to complete his education, Augustine’s father sent him off to Carthage to study rhetoric. It was there that he was introduced to Cicero’s Hortensius, an unfortunately lost dialogue. While inspiring him to devote himself to the study of philosophy, Hortensius led Augustine to begin to contrast the Christian Scriptures, particularly the Hebrew Scriptures, with the work of Cicero and the great philosophers of history. Augustine maintains that he always held Christ in high esteem, but “swollen in pride,” he found the Scriptures themselves failing to reach the rhetorical heights of Cicero.4 It was this haughty criticism of the Scriptures that moved Augustine to join the Manichees.5

What Augustine found so powerful about Manichaeism was its regard for Christ, something Hortensius never offered, while being willing to reject the anthropomorphic depiction of God of the Old Testament. This God, the Manichees contested, was bound by a body, that is, by matter and, thus, appeared to be tossed by the whims of embodied emotion. It was the light, identified by the teachings of Christ that, according to the Manichees, offered a rejection of the flesh, weakness, and superstition. In short, Manichaeism privileged the intellect. While Augustine was still mired in sin, especially sexual sin, Manichaeism taught that if you were intelligent enough, if you were dispassionate enough, if you were high-minded enough, you could overcome your sinfulness. And that was what Augustine sought and could never accomplish:

Down one path I pursued the vanity that is popular acclaim; eager for the applause of the theatre, the prizes of poetry, the contests for crowns of grass, the empty show of the public pageants, the intemperance of my lusts. Down the other I sought to be cleansed from those stains . . . .6

What Augustine had learned alongside rhetoric and philosophy was exactly how massively intelligent he really was. And yet, all of his years studying the philosophy of the Manichees could not free him from the prison of his sinfulness. Even the many books of the Neoplatonists, by which he hoped to further refine his philosophical acumen, provided no escape from the chains of his sexual immorality.

In his brokenness, however, God sought him. His years of study, while reinforcing certain aspects of his prideful sinfulness, compelled him to search for purer and purer truth. His desire for the knowledge that would allow him to understand his world and free him from his immorality eventually led him back to Christianity. Having moved from Carthage to Milan, Augustine was introduced to the bishop of Milan, Ambrose. It was Ambrose who taught him the allegorical interpretation of the Old Testament.7 During his time in Milan under the tutelage of Ambrose, Augustine begins to describe himself as, once again, a Christian.

Yet, this is not the moment of his conversion. His philosophical completion under Ambrose, provided in Book Seven, allowed him to recognize the vivacity of Christian thought.8 It was not, however, until Book Eight that his conversion is made final.9 Following a conversation with his friends about faith, Augustine found himself alone. Broken and weeping, he walked outside and sat beneath a tree in the garden attached to his home. He finally knew the truth, his friends had helped him find that for which he had spent his life searching, but he was still not free from the prison of his sin. Hearing a neighboring child at play singing, “Pick it up and read it,”10 Augustine took it as divine intervention, picked himself up and opened a nearby copy of the book of Romans and read, “Not in riotousness and drunkenness, not in lewdness and wantonness, not in strife ...