The catholic Consensus

A consensus is generally a very satisfactory thing to find.  It is a common human aim.  Consensus describes wide-spread agreement.  ‘The consensus’ can form a foundation for an individual’s beliefs.  Popular recently is the slogan  ‘trust the science’, or follow the science.  And many a person, trying to establish what they believe, don’t train to be a scientist, or claim to be one, but do their research (usually on the internet) to find what seems to be the consensus among scientists.  What they learn determines what they believe and trust.

Far more powerful than any consensus in any particular field, would be a ‘catholic consensus’.  To establish that would require finding out, not just what is held at the moment, but what has been agreed over a long period of time, as well as among a vast majority or people concerning a particular subject.  Common Law, ethics, or morality are examples of a universal consensus.  For instance, one could establish that there is a universal consensus that says ‘murder is bad’, or ‘caring for children is good’.

A universal consensus is a good place for one’s conscience to find refuge, too.  ‘I may be wrong’ becomes a safe thing to say, if one can then add ‘however the universal consensus is…’.  This is because one is less likely to be blamed for a mistaken notion if that idea can be proven to be part of a universal consensus.

Because so many generations of humanity have practiced religion, a universal consensus may be found there, too, if people are willing to look for it.  In the field of religious belief one may even use the word ‘catholic’ to describe a universal consensus.  Used to mean ‘universal’, ‘catholic’ could even be used to describe a Jewish consensus.  One could find in Judaism a ‘catholic consensus’ that there is only one true God.  A raison d’etre is usually the location for a religion’s catholic consensus.

Hence a universal consensus may not be very difficult to find in religion.  People being interested in that universal consensus is quite a different matter.  Where individualism is prized, or innovation highly esteemed, universal consensus has less attraction, supplanted as it is by opinions or new ideas, or even special revelations.

In Christian terms, the universal consensus is the unified voice of that 'great cloud of witnesses' who live in Heaven and on Earth, as to what is true about God and how He created us, and Redeemed us by His Son. The beliefs and practices of most Christians who have ever lived, and who live now concerning how God worked in the past, works now, and is worthy to be trusted and worshipped eternally is where it is easy to find a consensus.

Having said that, finding a universal consensus on a particular doctrine or practice is not always a comfortable discovery.  Take the universal consensus among Christians that it is too late to add further books to the Bible, and honour them as Holy Scripture.  To defy that consensus, a Mormon has to decide that a prophet like Joseph Smith (d.1844), or a ‘burning in the bosom’ trumps the catholic consensus of what Christians have believed across time, and in all places, all ages, etc.

Beyond the discomfort the universal consensus brings to cults and whacko sects, even many stodgy established denominations – like my own – may find the catholic consensus disconcerting in places.   The following is a list of practices and beliefs (in no particular order) that are demonstrably part of the universal consensus among Christians that – nevertheless - some denominations may find unsettling.

1.     Your church should have ranks of clergy who wear quite elaborate vestments leading worship services.

2.     Your church’s worship services should be liturgical, usually consisting of an outline of actions that are the same week by week.

3.     Your church should believe that Jesus Christ has promised to offer His Body and Blood under the forms of bread and wine for Christians to eat and drink at every Sunday service.

4.     Your church should use wine for the Blessed Sacrament displayed and distributed from a chalice.

5.     Your church should worship on Sundays.

6.     Your church should keep the same seasons, feasts and festivals every year, commemorating Christ, and honouring ‘saints’, the Blessed Virgin Mary among them.

7.     Your church members should make the sign of the cross as part of their identification with the prayer and devotion of the Faith.

8.     Your church should sing the Psalms in the Bible, as well as other hymns and spiritual songs.

9.     Your church should be decorated with symbols, statues, icons, paintings, sculptures, windows, candles, crucifixes, and other things as teaching aids and aids to worship.

10.  Your church should baptise people of all nations, and all ages – including infants.

11.  Your church should read from the Bible, preach sermons from the Bible, systematically, and devoutly, treating Holy Scripture with great honour – even kissing its pages.

12.  Your church should regard the place where worship is taking place as sacred, with Christ Himself mysteriously present where ‘two or three are gathered’ in His Name.

Now concerning these dozen items listed above - easily established – as part of the universal consensus among Christians of all times, I can honestly say they do not represent my personal choices, my tastes, my preference, my style, my anything.  That is precisely the point.  One can react to them, in submission or contempt, but one cannot claim to have invented them.  Whether or not one adopts them reflects how much one values the inheritance that has been conveyed from countless others through the ages who have gone before.

Now some, looking at this article, may ask, ‘What about Justification by Grace through Faith’, and what about the definition of the Gospel, and the number of books in the Bible?  Aren’t those things more important that whether there is a historical consensus on vestments? 

The catholic consensus has been described above in accurate, but broad terms, concerning the historic and present global reaction to the core teachings of the Christian faith.  There is no question of the importance of key elements of the Faith such as ordo salutis and the canon of Scripture, but the twelve things listed above are there not because they are more important, but because they are clearly agreed upon on a universal scale.

That is what needs to be recognised by Christians, whatever they believe.