“One further difficulty arising in regard to the informal or ‘virtual’ inference that both Newman and Batiffol appeal to is the extent to which such reasoning is conditioned by cultural and local standards for judging what sorts of inference are congruent or natural. Batiffol, as we have seen, insists that no factors extraneous to the deposit of revelation affect the informal reasoning of the Church. What is defined in its developed form is the result of the Church’s own growing self-understanding alone, but this is to make a very large assumption about the gap between Christian reasoning and its cultural milieu. To take one example, Newman speaks of the evolving recognition of the Mother of God as ‘a loving Mother with clients,’ a ‘Patroness or Paraclete’ for those who turn to her for aid. The process by which Mary’s intercession comes to be seen as especially or uniquely potent is a complex and fascinating story to trace, but it is no disservice to the cultus of the Mother of God to note that the language of patron and client takes for granted a particular social order—not one that derives from Christian principle and self-reflection, and one indeed that Christian principle might well want to challenge in many respects. To put it more generally, informal inference is more vulnerable to the conditioning of historical and social circumstances than its defenders might want to allow, and this might suggest a certain caution about imposing the conclusions of such a process of inference on the entire Christian community throughout time and space.”
Rowan Williams, The Malines Conversations: The Beginnings of Anglican-Roman Catholic Dialogue
