By Eduardo J. Echeverria.

In his recent book, Catholic Fundamentalism in America, Mark S. Massa, SJ, claims that five characteristics mark a "fundamentalist."

A "sectarian [resistance to] dialogue and collaboration."

Overemphasis on the institutional model of the Church such that fundamentalism identifies the Kingdom of God with the institution of the Roman Catholic Church.

An "a-historical understanding" of Church teaching such that "the meaning of Christianity, in which development was not possible because it represented apostasy from faith once delivered." (This point is so basic to Massa's understanding of Catholic fundamentalism that he takes it to be the "controlling metaphor of Catholic doctrine as the 'Deposit' of faith [that] seems to imply an unchanging (and unchangeable) list of positivist propositions that cannot develop or 'unfold' over time."

Focus on theology and doctrine using "the essentially political monikers of 'conservative' and 'liberal' to delineate their own position vis-à-vis mainstream American Catholicism."

And "a rhetorical style marked by apocalyptic urgency," reflecting an "almost breathless, accusatory, militant tone [in] their denunciations of others, especially fellow Catholics."

All these points are debatable, of course, but the most problematic is Massa's understanding of Catholicism as such, and not merely of fundamentalism: the phenomenon of "change." Massa explains change in light of Thomas Kuhn's notion of "paradigm shifts." The upshot is to embrace an unqualified "fallibilism," the claim that all beliefs are open to revision, that we cannot know anything definitively and finally. Also, he embraces an implication of Kuhn's paradigm - that there is no independent reality to explain and interpret.

Furthermore, he opposes the "classicist" worldview to historical mindedness, which he derives from Bernard Lonergan's essay, "The Transition from a Classicist World-View and Historical Mindedness." Massa explains, "For the classicists. . .[t]he Truth . . .remains substantially the same throughout history. For classicist believers, right (orthodox) belief [means] necessarily static realities." For the historical-minded approach, "everything is shaped by the changing circumstances of history."

Massa's appeal to historical mindedness involves denying the enduring validity of truth - which is what historicism means. According to Massa, one cannot take "change" of doctrine seriously if you hold truth to be propositional and objective, timelessly and eternally true. This view of truth, allegedly, reflects an a-historical and static understanding of doctrinal truth. Given this emphasis on historical mindedness, Catholicism becomes a perpetual reinterpreting and recontextualizing of the Gospel.

But Massa misunderstands doctrinal "development." A theory of doctrinal development is one "which allows for genuine development in doctrine," as Aidan Nichols rightly notes, "yet respects the substantial homogeneity of revealed truth." John XXIII suggests this theory in his opening address at Vatican II, Gaudet Mater Ecclesia. "For the deposit of faith [2 Timothy 1:14], the truths contained in our sacred teaching, are one thing; the mode in which they are expressed, but with the same meaning and the same judgment [eodem sensu eademque sententia], is another thing."

The subordinate clause in this passage is part of a longer passage from Vatican I's Dei Filius, and this passage itself draws on the Commonitorium 23 of Vincent of Lérins.

Therefore, let there be growth and abundant progress in understanding, knowledge, and wisdom, in each and all, in individuals and in the whole Church, at all times and in the progress of ages, but only with the proper limits, i.e., within the same dogma, the same meaning, the same judgment (eodem sensu eademque sententia).

Yves Congar, O.P. (1904-1995), among many others, has argued that this distinction between propositional truths of faith and their historically conditioned form...