Editor’s Note: The following
article is so much more than merely part of our ongoing response
to The Wanderer’s attack on The Remnant. This article is just
what its title suggests it is: a justification and a defense of
the entire Traditional Catholic platform. Still, for readers who
have grown weary of reading anything more about The Wanderer’s
attack, we have decided not to devote more regular column space
to this defense. We are adding eight pages to this issue of The
Remnant in order to accommodate our defense under the format of
a Remnant Supplement. This, of course, causes our postage costs
to skyrocket. But it also demonstrates just how important we
believe this discussion is. In the last analysis and after
reading Mr. Ferrara’s piece, we even felt inclined to offer our
thanks to The Wanderer and Stephen Hand for having provided the
catalyst for two very positive developments: 1) A prolonged
discussion of “We Resist You to the Face,” which will serve the
hoped-for end for which the Statement was written. 2) The total
discrediting of the “conservative” position: The Wanderer’s
attack, by all accounts, has been adequately diffused already,
but it’s now time to expose the myriad “conservative” errors
once and for all. Our thanks to Mr. Ferrara for his fine body of
work, which serves both these ends. MJM
A FAILURE OF PROOF
This installment is supposed to be a reply to Part 4 of The
Wanderer’s tract (authored by Stephen Hand), but a systematic answer
to what Mr. Hand says there is beyond my limited powers of analysis
and synthesis. Part 4 is essentially a rambling reiteration of
everything Hand has already said in the first three Parts. He flits
from subject to subject without logical connection, making one bare
assertion after another, so that if one were to reply to him in the
order of his various assertions, the reply would be as disorganized
as the assertions themselves. It is impossible to find a line of
argument in Hand’s various remarks. First, Hand denounces
unidentified “integrists” for denying the very legitimacy of Vatican
II as a council of the Church; then he accuses them of interpreting
the Bible on their own, just like the Protestants; then he declares
that “every heretic thinks the Pope is a heretic and every
schismatic thinks the Pope has departed from the Deposit of Faith.”
Are you keeping a tally? Next, Hand offers the curious observation
that he finds it difficult to conceive “that laymen sitting in front
of the TV eating their pretzels and watching their games can feel
confident in opposing the Successor of Peter without severe angst.”
Now, I have heard of the argumentum ad hominem, but this is the
first time I have seen the argumentum ad pretzelem. What do the
snack food preferences of “integrists” have to do with the merits of
their arguments—none of which Hand really addresses? Hand adds that
he is astonished that “they” do not fear schism, and that “they”
have “grotesquely inflated egos.” Who? You know—they.
From there Hand jumps to the claim that the ISOCC video and certain
“traditionalist personalities and papers” declare “that the visible
Church is no longer the Church” and that they are guilty of
“heretical sedevacantism.” This charge Hand bases entirely on a
false characterization of the ISOCC video, which says nothing of the
kind. To address this mischaracterization, the video’s producers
have published a statement in the Remnant of August 15th which
should make it clear to anyone who is not comatose that the phrase
“it is a new Church and a new religion” is used in the same relative
sense that Hand’s own tract uses the phrase “the fact is, it simply
didn’t seem like church anymore” to describe the unrecognizable
travesty of a Mass he encountered when he returned to the Faith
after a long absence. The ISOCC’s August 15 statement also
affirms—precisely as they told me, and as I reported in my first
installment—that the visible Church is still the Church, and that
John Paul II is its head. Only the malicious will refuse to accept
their affirmation. Enough, already, about the ISOCC video.
Hopping about like a frog on a series of lily pads, Hand next
denounces both The Remnant and Catholic Family News for “attacks
against the Indult Mass and the approved Traditional Catholic
orders.” [Editor’s Note: For some reason, Mr. Hand has recently
begun to pretend that he doesn’t understand the difference between
us warning against what we have consistently called the “indult
mentality” (i.e., the unspoken pact which some Traditionalists seem
to make with their bishops, whereby they swap their silence against
the revolution in exchange for permission for the Tridentine Mass)
and attacking the Indult Mass itself which, as we have repeatedly
pointed out, would be to denigrate the Tridentine Mass. We have
said, again and again, that the word “indult” in front of the word
“Mass” cannot possibly change the essence of the Mass. The “indult
mentality,” on the other hand, is an entirely different matter and
should be strongly warned against, as we continue to do.
This warning, however, is directed at ourselves—at
Traditionalists—as the “mentality” is self-imposed. Why would
Stephen Hand fail to make this distinction and instead accuse us of
attacking the Mass itself? Readers will have to ask him that
question, as I have no idea why he does anything he does. MJM] Not
only does Hand cite no evidence for the charge—because he has
none—but he deliberately suppresses key evidence that exonerates The
Remnant and its editor: Though taking issue with certain recent FSSP
tendencies towards unjust compromise, The Remnant has repeatedly
affirmed its support of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter, as
recently as the August 15th issue; Michael Matt himself organized
the American Chapter on the Pilgrimage to Chartres, France, each and
every year for the past ten years, and this Pilgrimage has the
priests of the FSSP as its official chaplains; and Michael Matt
himself attends a diocesan-approved Indult Mass.
Hand next offers the rather abstruse accusation that The Remnant and
Catholic Family News “deflect” what he claims is their obligation to
“repudiate with great regret such audacity.” (Which audacity? I’ve
lost track.) Hand laments that “this deflection is tragic in the
extreme.”
Having lamented this extremely tragic deflection, Hand observes,
quite irrelevantly, that the Church fathers who taught on licit
resistance to the Pope under certain circumstances did not “believe
that it was possible to attribute heresy or grave errors to the
teaching Magisterium or that the Church could defect from the Faith
and make void the promises of Christ.” By this remark Hand evidently
means to suggest that somebody or other among the “integrists”
believes that these things are possible, although he identifies no
one who actually says so.
As Hand rambles on toward the end of Part 4, he offers the insight
that piety does no good if “it is severed from Catholic dogmatic
certainties”—you don’t say!—and that if “piety is used against the
Church” then the bishops will be “more and more suspicious of us all
as we are broad-brushed together.” Hand somehow fails to notice that
it is he who is wielding the broad brush. However, I can certainly
agree with Hand that Catholic piety makes bishops suspicious.
Next, Hand leapfrogs to the odd non sequitur that the traditional
Latin Mass is “no guarantee of right theological thinking” because
the modernists offered the traditional Mass at the turn of the
century. From this brilliant insight one could just as easily deduce
that the Catholic Church itself is no guarantee of right theological
thinking, as the modernists all belonged to it before they defected
from the Faith.
From there Hand jumps to the claim that traditionalists, like
Protestants, “call one another heretics or dangerous, ad nauseam”
and that this is what happens when “Peter the Rock is rejected.”
Excuse me, but the only one who is accusing his fellow Catholics of
heresy, a la the Protestants, is Stephen Hand. Traditionalists
certainly have disputes among themselves, but I don’t recall any
responsible traditionalist, such as Michael Matt, denominating any
fellow traditionalist—or, for that matter, any “conservative”—a
heretic.
As Part 4 finally sputters to a conclusion, Hand contends that canon
law allows one to make “constructive criticism of ill-considered
directions and poorly formulated teaching at the local levels”—why
only “local levels”?—but never by way of “private judgment and
rejecting the most basic truths of the Catechism.” Which “basic
truths” of the Catechism does Hand claim traditionalists reject?
Naturally, he doesn’t say.
Nowhere in this hopeless jumble does Hand provide a single quotation
to demonstrate that anyone in particular holds any of the views he
condemns. Nowhere does he attempt any analysis or refutation of the
actual statements of real people. But then, his whole tract suffers
from the same fatal deficiency. The whole thing is a kind of
extended rhetorical wink at the “conservative” gallery: We know who
they are, don’t we? And we know what they believe, don’t we?
In reviewing Hand’s haphazard and exceedingly slim presentation, I
am reminded of Cardinal Newman’s Apologia Pro Vita Sua, in which he
gave this assessment of the infamous pamphlet written against him by
his justly forgotten accuser, Charles Kingsley: “[T]he Pamphlet . .
. is as slovenly and random and futile in its definite charges, as
it is iniquitous in its method of argument.” Slovenly, random and
futile are apt descriptions of Hand’s own pamphlet, in which he
whirls about and fires off his blunderbuss at various ill-defined
targets, none of which he manages to hit with even a single pellet
of hard evidence. The word “iniquitous” also applies to Hand’s
method of argument, as shown by his suppression of key evidence,
noted above. (I will give other examples of Hand’s deliberate
suppression of evidence further on.) In short, I have nothing much
to say about Part 4 of Hand’s “monograph,” except to make clear that
I do not use my by-line to defend sedevacantists, or those who say
that the Second Vatican Council was not a valid council of the
Catholic Church, or those who accuse the conciliar Popes or the
Council of teaching actual heresy, as that term is properly
understood (the denial of an article of divine and Catholic faith),
or those who affirm that the New Mass or the new rite of priestly
ordination are invalid, meaning that we would now have no Masses and
no priests in nearly the entire Catholic Church.
My friends Michael Matt and John Vennari have never held such
views, nor, to my knowledge, have they ever been held by the other
signers of We Resist You (henceforth the Statement). It is not my
burden to defend nameless phantoms summoned by Hand from the
periphery of the post-conciliar debacle, and I do not defend them
here. Rather it is Hand’s burden to show that the particular people
I defend—the ones he has accused by name—have advocated such things;
and he has not shown this because there is no evidence of it. That
is precisely why Hand’s entire tract is devoid of quotations from
the written and oral statements of the accused. Hand offers us
nothing but 63 pages of vaporous innuendo.
I hasten to add that those who have adopted such extreme positions
are for the most part merely victims of the unprecedented state of
confusion in the Church today. When the 1,500-year-old liturgy of
the Roman Rite is tossed aside in favor of an entirely new rite of
Mass concocted by a committee with the aid of six Protestant
advisors, under the tutelage of a suspected Mason later sacked and
sent off to Iran; or when the reigning Pope celebrates solemn
liturgies in St. Peter’s Basilica and many other places with
pro-abortion laymen in bishop’s costumes; or when His Holiness says
such things as “May Saint John the Baptist protect Islam . . .”—when
strange, shocking, utterly unprecedented things like these happen
again and again in the post-conciliar Church, it is hardly
surprising that some shocked and rightfully scandalized people will
come to the wrong conclusions, having simply failed to make the
right distinctions.
As I said at the beginning of my reply to Hand, if one wishes to be
honest, one must look to Rome for the ultimate cause of the post-conciliar
crisis. The Pope is our father in the faith, and we must revere him
as such, but we can no longer pretend that the state of the
household of the Faith has nothing to do with the head of the
household. Now, there is no question that it is a gravely difficult
thing for a layman to undertake what he believes is due criticism of
the Pope’s stewardship of the Church without undermining respect for
the institution of the papacy itself. That the task is difficult,
however, does not excuse us from undertaking it. Obsequious silence
is not an option when we are confronted with what Paul VI himself
described as the auto-demolition of the Church. If we say we love
the Holy Father but do nothing to make known to him our concerns or
to resist actions we believe are deeply injurious to the Church, we
have ignored the voice of conscience and failed in our obligation in
charity. For this reason Saint Thomas teaches that “the fraternal
correction which is an act of charity is within the competency of
everyone in respect of any person to whom one is bound by charity,
provided there is something in that person which requires
correction.”[i] Here the Angelic Doctor was speaking
precisely of St. Paul’s public rebuke of the first Pope for his
scandalous conduct in betraying his mission to the Gentiles.
I am writing, then, to defend nothing more or less than Roman
Catholic traditionalism of the sort practiced by my friends Michael
Matt and John Vennari, who have had the courage to exercise their
duty as they see it, even if it involves criticism of the Roman
Pontiff. Let Hand and The Wanderer prattle on about phantoms holding
positions the accused and I do not defend. I could not care less.
Summary Judgment In law there
is a procedure called the motion for summary judgment. When a
claimant manifestly has no real evidence for his claim, a trial is
not necessary and the claim is dismissed upon the opposing party’s
motion for summary judgment. It is time for summary judgment in the
case of Stephen Hand and The Wanderer vs. Michael Matt, et al.
There is no reason to keep the reader in suspense any longer:
Although this article nominally concerns Part 4 of Stephen Hand’s
rant against the “integrists,” the entire tract has already been
published by The Wanderer Press. Just as I predicted in the first
part of my reply to the tract, Hand has failed to produce a single
quotation from the oral or written statements of the accused to
prove his original charge that “Modernists and Integrists are
actually twins. Both thrive on opposition to the living Magisterium.”
What is more, the Magisterium deals not with vague notions or new
ecclesial orientations, but with specific doctrinal teaching which
Catholics are bound to accept. Hand has never specified in the first
place which doctrines of this “living Magisterium” Michael Matt,
John Vennari, et al. are alleged to oppose. Hand’s failure is easy
to explain: the accused do not oppose any Catholic doctrines. If
they did, Hand would have identified them. As I said at the
beginning of my defense, Hand’s accusations have nothing to do with
doctrine, but rather ecclesial attitudes of the accused, which he
and Al Matt do not like. So much for the charge of opposing “the
living Magisterium.” Let us enter summary judgment in favor of the
accused. Claim dismissed.
As for the charge of schism, Hand has not lifted a pinky to
demonstrate that the accused have committed any act which
constitutes a breaking of communion with the Roman Pontiff. Oddly
enough, while the Statement was identified in Alphonse Matt’s
preface as Exhibit A in Hand’s case against the “integrists,” Hand
fails to discuss it anywhere in his 63 pages of rambling
observations and tendentious characterizations of what he claims
other people believe. Further on I will demonstrate that the
Statement is easily defensible as an expression of opinion within
the due liberty of discussion in the Church, no matter how
strenuously Hand and Al Matt may disagree with it. First, however, I
will address some recent developments in this controversy, and
further develop the broader case for the traditionalist position, as
our Remnant defense has been attempting to do since this Wanderer
attack was initiated.
Meanwhile, Out in the Hallway Having failed to prove
his case when he was in the courtroom, Hand keeps trying to continue
the argument outside in the hallway. His increasingly frantic
Website raves on, describing Michael Matt, John Vennari, Atila Sinke
Guimarães and Marian Horvat as “the schismatic four” and myself as
“the defender of the schismatic four.” Pretty compelling
argumentation, eh? Hand has even added my photograph to his
ever-growing rogue’s gallery of schismatics.
In a shockingly crass provocation, Hand recently published on his
Website the commentary of a pro-abortion activist, who condemns me
for having acted as lead defense counsel for a group of pro-lifers
who were sued by Planned Parenthood and a gaggle of abortionists
under the ridiculous theory that protest posters against named
abortionists are “death threats” in violation of RICO. On Hand’s
supposedly Catholic Website, this pro-abort recounted the joyous
victory celebration she and the abortionists attended after the jury
(having practically been ordered to do so by the jury instructions)
found in favor of the abortionists, one of whom specializes in third
trimester abortions. (The verdict is now on appeal in the 9th
Circuit Court of Appeals, with arguments set for September 12. Even
liberal commentators are saying that the verdict is a threat to the
First Amendment. Please pray for me.) Hand tried to pass off this
incredibly shabby trick as an effort to stimulate legitimate debate
on the First Amendment limits of pro-life protest. But after someone
objected that Hand was trying to get at me by climbing on the backs
of aborted babies, he removed the pro-abort’s vile excrescences from
his Website.
In his effort to continue the case he failed to prove in The
Wanderer, Hand is now resorting to outright trickery. A piece on his
Website proclaims the shocking news that the signers of the
Statement “suggest conciliar Popes are heretics to be deposed.” To
prove his latest accusation Hand relies upon a highly selective
quotation from the Statement:
In our view, a possible future
declaration of a sede vacante (papal chair empty) would take
place automatically when the Church would become aware of the
gravity of the present day errors and who is responsible for
them.
Hand’s deception is revealed by the full context of the quote,
which conveys precisely the opposite of what Hand suggests:
This resistance statement does not imply:
The desire to judge the Pope, but
only to compare his teaching with the prior Magisterium of other
popes and of the Church.
The desire to declare that the
Apostolic See is vacant. In our view, a possible future
declaration of a sede vacante (the period of time when the
Apostolic See is empty, as a consequence of the heresy of the
Pope) would take place automatically when the Church would
become aware of the gravity of the present-day errors and of who
is responsible for them. Should such a situation not become
public and notorious, the declaration of the aforementioned
judgment would fall to future pontiffs.
If anything, the full quotation makes it clear that the conciliar
popes cannot be judged by anyone but future pontiffs because they
have not engaged in the sort of public and notorious heresy which
(according to accepted theological opinion) would make it manifest
that a pope has defected from the faith and thereby lost his office.
Hand not only conceals the context of the quote, he deliberately
obscures the truth that the signers unquestionably recognize John
Paul II as the validly reigning Roman Pontiff because the Statement
is addressed to him precisely as the Pope and they appeal to his
papal authority in the Statement’s conclusion.
As for the theoretical possibility that the See of Peter could
become vacant due to papal heresy, Hand’s hysteria aside, this is a
perfectly permissible theological speculation in the Church, even if
present-day sedevacantists have failed to prove that the conciliar
popes or the Council have taught heresy in the proper sense: that
is, an obstinate denial of some article of divine and Catholic
faith. (See Canon 751) If Hand were not so busy blasting away with
his blunderbuss, he might have found the time to do a little
research on the sedevacantist hypothesis. As no less than Saint
Robert Bellarmine observes:
A pope who is a manifest heretic
automatically (per se) ceases to be pope and head, just as he
ceases automatically to be a Christian and member of the Church.
Wherefore he can be judged and punished by the Church. This is
the teaching of all the ancient Fathers who teach that manifest
heretics immediately lose all jurisdiction.[ii]
Had he done some reading on the topic from current Church
sources, Hand would have discovered that even the commentary to the
1983 Code of Canon Law recognizes the long pedigree of theological
opinion on the possibility of the See of Peter being vacant due to
papal heresy: Classical canonists
discussed the question of whether a pope, in his private or personal
opinions, could go into heresy . . . If he were to do so in a
notoriously and widely publicized manner, he would break communion,
and according to an accepted opinion, lose his office ipso facto . .
. Since no one can judge the pope (c. 1404) or depose a pope for
such crimes, the authors are divided as to how his loss of office
would be declared in such a way that a vacancy could then be filled
by a new election.[iii]
The problem is not that present-day sedevacantists have embraced a
theologically inadmissible opinion—an opinion Hand seems to think is
heretical in itself—but rather that they have failed to prove their
claims of actual heresy in the teaching of the Council or the
conciliar popes. Indeed, Bellarmine taught that we should piously
presume that God would never allow a reigning Pope to become a
formal heretic, even if the theoretical possibility exists. Since
solid evidence has not been supplied to prove the contrary, Michael
Matt and John Vennari so presume, as do the other traditionalists
whom I would defend.
At any rate, we can see that on the one occasion when Hand does
actually quote from a statement of the accused, he carefully crops
the quotation to convey a false impression. To my mind, this is even
worse than his enlistment of pro-aborts to provoke his targets.
Tactics like these belie the professed nobility of Hand’s crusade.
In candor I must observe that we are confronted with a juvenile and
vindictive debater who has access to some very dangerous toys. And
now he has found himself a new playmate: the self-styled Catholic
apologist from San Diego, Karl Keating.
Keating and Hand: Perfect Together
I suppose it was only a matter of time before we heard from Karl
Keating in this controversy. A little background on this gentleman
is in order.
My relations with Mr. Keating date back to my defense of Gerry
Matatics against Keating’s outrageous accusation, published in The
Wanderer five years ago, that “Gerry Matatics is a sad example of
how schism leads very quickly to heresy.”[iv] Gerry and I challenged
Keating to prove his accusation, but as with Mr. Hand’s charges
against Michael Matt, et al. the evidence was never forthcoming.
Keating promised to provide “the testimony of several dozen people”
and quotations from Gerry’s “own words, taken from his own talks and
other writings,”[v] but neither the witnesses nor the quotations
ever materialized. Keating also announced at a “Defending the Faith”
conference that he was writing an entire book on “extreme
traditionalists.” Like the witnesses and the quotations, however,
the book has never seen the light of day.
Those who remember Keating’s gratuitous denunciation of Gerry
Matatics in The Wanderer and elsewhere understand that Keating has
arrogated to himself the role of grand inquisitor of the
traditionalists. (This is perhaps because Keating needs something to
do, given the general slowdown in the apologetics industry now that
the “ecumenical venture” has made it unfashionable to “refute” the
“errors” of Protestantism.) In explaining why he just had to
denounce Gerry as a heretic and a schismatic to the whole Catholic
world, Keating publicly professed great anguish over the task he had
assigned himself: “This is not something I look forward to doing; it
is something I prayed would pass me by.”[vi] Keating decided on his
own initiative to issue false accusations against a fellow Catholic,
and then tried to make his malicious behavior sound like the Agony
in the Garden. No delusion of grandeur here.
Keating has been nibbling around the edges of this current
controversy for some time now, as if waiting for the right moment to
sink his teeth into it. He has been commenting about me and Gerry
Matatics, the ISOCC video and the Statement in his “Catholic
Answers” Q & A forum on the EWTN Website. (In his Q & A on the
controversy, Keating simply invents the claim that I criticized the
ISOCC video because it was “promoting schism,” which is something I
never said or suggested in my critique.)
Keating has also been providing advice to Hand behind the scenes. It
certainly appears that Hand has mastered Keating’s technique for
bashing traditionalists: characterize what they believe, but never,
no never, actually quote them. And if you must quote them, never
provide the full context. Keating surely appreciates what a tricky
business it is to quote such articulate traditionalists as Gerry
Matatics, for what they say makes a great deal of sense when it is
honestly presented in its full context. (This is exactly why Hand
goes on for 63 pages in his tract without ever once quoting the
views of the people he condemns.)
Now it seems it is my turn for the Keating Treatment. Hand has
publicly posted on his Website what I thought was a private email
from Keating to me, dated July 21, 2000. In this marvelously pompous
communication Keating informs me as follows (my emphasis):
You and your friends must choose. You need to be honest with
yourselves and with your public. You must make clear your entry into
schism or you must reject schism not just in theory but in fact—and
that means rejecting the video and the manifesto and the entire
course you have been on for a long a time. Chris, it’s time to fish
or cut bait. It is difficult to believe that Keating could expect
such statements to be greeted with anything but uproarious laughter.
For one thing, even if I were a schismatic, what could be more
ridiculous than asking me to “make clear” my “entry into schism”?
The history of the Church is not exactly chock-a-block with
schismatics who say: All right, you’ve got me, I’m a schismatic.
What would Keating propose that I do? Perhaps he thinks I should
accede to his demand by way of a reply email:
Dear Karl:
In reply to your email of July 21,
2000, this will confirm my entry into schism. Thank you for helping
me clarify my canonical situation.
Formerly yours in Christ,
Chris Ferrara How is it possible for anyone to take himself that
seriously? Naturally, I was dismayed when Keating published such
silliness on the Internet, especially when I had thought his email
was for my eyes only—you know, private fraternal dialogue among
Catholics, that sort of thing. In fact, when I replied to Keating I
told him that I considered our correspondence confidential. How
naive of me.
However, we must at least admit that Keating is quite the prose
stylist: “Chris, it’s time to fish or cut bait” has that je ne sais
quois which distinguishes merely adequate from truly elegant prose.
Keating’s style rather reminds me of the great 16th century
disputations of eminent Churchmen with the Protestants; those of
Johann Eck or Edmund Campion come to mind. One can easily imagine
the scene in the crowded and hushed aula of Pleissenburg Castle, as
Eck rises to reply to Luther on the question of the papal primacy:
“Martin, it’s time to fish or cut bait!” No wonder Keating thought
his literary gem of an email needed to be published to the whole
world.
Of course, Keating did not trouble himself to demonstrate from a
single thing I have ever said or written that I have entered into
“schism.” Since he concludes that the ISOCC video and the Statement
are “schismatic”—a proposition he does not bother to prove—it
follows as night follows day that anyone who defends the authors of
these documents against the charge of schism is a schismatic by
association. Like Hand’s tract, Keating’s email heaps conclusion
upon conclusion without any evidentiary foundation, culminating in
his demands that I must do this and I must do that in order to save
my membership in the Holy Catholic Church.
Moreover, His Eminence is not satisfied that I have publicly
critiqued what I believe to be the problems in the ISOCC video, and
that its “schismatic” producers shipped a copy of my critique with
each copy of the video. No, he demands more! And what would satisfy
him? Clearly, nothing would satisfy him. For it is plain that
Keating is not interested in my welfare or my membership in the
Church, which I suspect he does not doubt for a moment. He is
interested only in splashy denunciations of traditionalist Catholics
before the general public, which makes his entrance into this most
recent Wanderer controversy not surprising in the least.
To be perfectly fair to Keating, he did also suggest that I have
entered into schism because of “the entire course you have been on
for a long time.” As to what Keating means by “the entire course you
have been on for a long time,” that is anybody’s guess. Perhaps
Keating expects me to make a catalogue of my writings and speeches
for him to review, so that he can produce of a list of the
propositions I must recant in order to prove to him that I am still
a member of the Church. Or perhaps he is expecting another email:
Dear Karl, In reply to your email of
July 21, 2000, this will confirm that I have rejected “the entire
course [I] have been on for a long time.” Since you did not specify
what you mean by “entire course” or “a long time,” I assume it will
suffice if I reject, say, everything I have believed and said for
the past ten years.
Since I have now rejected the entire course I have been on for a
long time, I would appreciate it if you would approve my readmission
into the Catholic Church at your earliest convenience.
Yours truly,
Chris Ferrara There you have it: the Keating Treatment. Isn’t the
man just precious? Over the years Keating seems to have slipped into
the delusion that his title as President of Catholic Answers, which
he conferred upon himself, lends a kind of self-proving quality to
his mere ipse dixit. There is no need for him to prove his charges
against traditionalists; it is sufficient that he has made them. Let
lesser men stoop to the burden of proof. The wonder is that anybody
takes Keating’s accusations seriously. In fact, when Keating made
gratuitous accusations against Gerry Matatics to one of America’s
foremost Churchmen, he learned that his imperious manner does not
play well outside the little kingdom he has fashioned for himself:
Have you lost your grip on the larger world? You imply,
astonishingly that because you and Mr. Matatics do not get along . .
. that I should have assumed that he is wrong and you right when,
even in the recent letter you wrote, you did not mention the subject
of dispute, much less why Mr. Matatics is wrong. Grow up. Fight your
battles and indeed win them if you can. But contain your
disappointment that the whole world is not afloat in your teacup.
Sad to say, Keating still seems to think his teacup is a very big
place. You just can’t put a dent in some people.
Keating/Hand on Schism
Keating’s email demonstrates that he (like Hand) has a manifestly
shaky grasp on the whole concept of schism—a remarkable state of
affairs, given the amount of time Keating spends talking about the
schismatic status of “extreme traditionalists.” As Keating further
informed me in his July 21 email: By
the way, there is no requirement under canon law that the refusal of
submission be in all things; one is still a schismatic if one
refuses submission in fewer than all things. Keating really seems
to believe that if one were to disobey the Pope in, say, two or
three things, or even one thing, that would constitute schism. In
short, for Keating disobedience = schism. Karl, Karl, Karl. Five
years have passed since he denounced Gerry Matatics for schism and
Keating still does not quite understand what the term denotes.
Contrary to what most “conservatives” assume, schism is not
disobedience to certain papal commands, but rather a rejection of
the Pope’s authority in itself. As the Catholic Encyclopedia notes:
[N]ot every disobedience is schism;
in order to possess this character it must include besides the
transgression of the commands of superiors, denial of their divine
right to command.[vii]
Thus, for example, there was no schism involved in the refusal of
Polycrates of Ephesus and the synods of Asia Minor to obey the
command of Pope Victor I that they abandon the quartodeciman Easter.
Polycrates and his fellow bishops resisted—as in “we resist you”—on
the grounds that they had adjudged— as in “private judgment”—that
the Pope had no right to order them to abandon a custom they claimed
was descended from St. John himself. The Catholic Encyclopedia makes
the very distinction Keating/Hand recklessly ignore:
The resistance of the Asiatic bishops involved no denial of the
supremacy of Rome. It indicates solely that the bishops believed St.
Victor to be abusing his power in bidding them renounce a custom for
which they had Apostolic authority.8
Likewise, there was no act of schism when, in 1331, certain French
theologians and Cardinal Orsini denounced Pope John XXII as a
heretic after he preached and developed in a series of sermons the
thesis that there is no particular judgment immediately after death,
but that the Beatific vision of the saved and the eternal punishment
of the damned await the final judgment of God on the Last Day.
Cardinal Orsini even called for a council to pronounce the Pope a
heretic, yet Church history does not record that Orsini or those who
agreed with him (including King Louis of Bavaria) were in schism,
even though their motives were evidently more political than
religious.8A On the contrary, history records that when he was
resisted in his novel teaching, John XXII replied that he did not
intend to bind the whole Church, and he impaneled a commission of
theologians to consider the question. The commission informed the
Pope that he was in error.
A well-known modern example of licit resistance even to papally
approved doctrinal novelties is the public furor over the
astoundingly defective definition of Holy Mass in Article 7 of the
General Instruction to the Roman Missal, prepared by Bugnini for the
promulgation of Pope Paul’s new rite of Mass:
The Lord's Supper or Mass is the sacred assembly or congregation of
the people of God met together, with a priest presiding, to
celebrate the memorial of the Lord. For this reason Christ's promise
applies supremely to a local gathering together of the Church:
‘Where two or three come together in my name, there am I in their
midst.’ (Mt. 18:20)
Any Protestant would be quite pleased with this definition. It
was only after publication of the Ottaviani Intervention, which
exposed this outrage, that Paul VI was forced to rescind this
quasi-heretical definition of the Mass and order it replaced with
one which made some mention that the Mass is the unbloody Sacrifice
of Our Lord on Calvary, made present on the altar by the priest
acting in persona Christi. There were no “conservatives” like Mr.
Hand around in those days to accuse Cardinals Ottaviani and Bacci of
schism for protesting this atrocious definition of the Mass, not to
mention the whole theology of the new rite itself.
It is not surprising that Mr. Hand failed to acquaint himself with
the precise nature of schism and the facts of Church history I have
just cited, but it defies belief that Mr. Keating, who purports to
give the world Catholic answers, is unaware of these things.
I won’t bore the reader with all the details of my reply to
Keating’s email. I do note that I provided him with an additional
vivid example to illustrate how the Church views the crucial
canonical and theological difference between schism and simple
disobedience: Hans Küng is very, very disobedient to the Pope; he
has even condemned John Paul II as a despot who “rules in the spirit
of the Spanish Inquisition.” Yet the Vatican does not consider Kung
to be a schismatic. On the contrary, he remains a priest in good
standing in the Diocese of Basle, and Cardinal Ratzinger has
referred to him as “a great scholar.” Why is this? Because Küng does
not deny the papal office itself, so he cannot be convicted of
schism, which involves a positive breaking of communion with the See
of Peter. Thus, while Küng is no longer allowed to call himself a
Catholic theologian, he is allowed to remain a Catholic priest. I
asked Keating by what right he condemns me and my friends as
schismatics, when the Vatican regards the likes of Küng as being in
communion with the Holy See. I suspect the answer will come no
sooner than the several dozen witnesses, the Matatics quotations and
the book on “extreme traditionalists.”
To assist Keating further in this area, I referred him to the
above-quoted sections of the Catholic Encyclopedia. In a bit of
supreme irony, the text I quote from the online Catholic
Encyclopedia’s article on schism is found immediately adjacent to an
advertisement for Keating’s book What Catholics Believe. Perhaps
before the next edition is published, Keating will have acquainted
himself with what Catholics believe about the nature of schism.
From all of this it follows that even if the signers of the
Statement were wrong in their stated resistance to certain post-conciliar
novelties, they would not for that reason be guilty of schism,
because they have not denied the divine office of the papacy in
itself. As I have just shown, the offense of schism does not arise
merely because resistance to a particular papal act is not
successful or especially well grounded. Rather, the offense depends
upon on whether the Pope’s authority is generally denied by the
resistor. Like the faithful Catholics who challenged teachings by
John XXII and Paul VI, the signers of the Statement have not
generally denied the Pope’s authority. Quite the contrary, they have
appealed to it: Most Holy Father, the
Catholic laity who direct themselves to You in this declaration of
resistance are among the most ardent supporters of the papacy. For
us, the monarchical institution of the Church with the Pope at its
apex is the perfect summation of the universe created by God . . .
And the Pope is the natural link that joins the Glorious Christ with
the Church, and the Church with heaven. We recognize, therefore,
that there cannot be a more elevated position than that of the
Supreme Pontiff, nor one more worthy of admiration. It is based on
this premise that we direct this document to Your Holiness. We
humbly beg the Incarnate Wisdom to illuminate your intelligence, and
guide your will to do what should be done for the glory of God, the
exaltation of Holy Mother Church, and the salvation of souls.
Schismatics do not beg the Pope to exercise his supreme authority;
they do not recognize that authority in the first place. This
passage from the Statement completely extinguishes Hand/
Keating/Matt’s frivolous charge of schism. Let us mark it
dismissed—on summary judgment.
Watchdogs of the Revolution At
any rate, it occurs to me that Keating’s unsolicited advice—“You
need to be honest with yourselves and with your public. You must
make clear your entry into schism or you must reject schism”—would
be very appropriately addressed to numerous bishops and priests in
the desolated vineyard of what even The Wanderer contemptuously
describes as Amchurch. But Keating is not about to antagonize the
decaying ecclesial establishment on which the existence of his
“conservative” apostolate depends. It is a safe bet that Keating has
never informed any neo-modernist priest or bishop that he must be
honest with his public and make clear his entry into schism, or else
reject schism and “the entire course you have been on for a long
time.” Like Hand, Keating typifies the “conservative” Catholic’s
passivity in the face of what Paul VI described as the
auto-demolition of the Church—a passivity punctuated only by
occasional outbursts against traditionalists who oppose the
demolition vocally enough to remind the “conservative” that he
himself has done absolutely nothing to oppose it, and worse, that he
has even profited from it.
As I have written elsewhere, prominent “conservatives” like Keating
serve as the watchdogs of the post-conciliar revolution. They
slumber peacefully while an army of burglars ransacks the household
of the Faith, but can always be counted on to leap to their feet and
run upstairs to yap at a few traditionalists huddled in the attic
with their remaining possessions, including some “illicit” Latin
Masses. Meanwhile, the burglars continue their work downstairs
without interruption. In his book The Remaking of the Catholic
Church, the arch-liberal Richard P. McBrien noted this very
phenomenon: “Criticism of the extreme right by moderate
conservatives is far more effective than by moderate progressives.”9
How right he is: The Church is infested with scandal and
neo-modernist heresy, and heterodox literature denying or
undermining dogmas and doctrines of the Faith abounds in Catholic
seminaries and universities. But Keating and Hand leap to action
over a video produced by a retired couple in Arizona and a Statement
signed by four traditionalist Catholics, while Al Matt devotes seven
issues of his newspaper to these items—yet manages to avoid any real
discussion of their contents!
Woof! woof!, goes Mr. Hand. Arf! Arf!, goes Mr. Keating. Yip! Yip!,
goes Alphonse Matt. Good boy!, says Richard P. McBrien.
As the present controversy demonstrates, the very existence of a
large body of quiescent “conservatives” has allowed the post-conciliar
revolution to advance so far into the structure of the Church. The
basic function of the “conservative” Catholic in the dynamic of the
revolution has been the marginalization of traditionalists, whom
“conservative” leaders helpfully denounce for their simple refusal
to cease being what “conservatives” themselves were only 35 years
ago. With the traditionalists safely marginalized, the soft wood of
the conservatives is the only resistance the termites have
encountered. The results speak for themselves.
This is not to say that “conservatives” as a group are subjectively
complicit in the advances of the post-conciliar revolution. Most
“conservatives” have accepted all the changes in good faith, hewing
to the false notion of holy obedience peddled by “conservatives”
like Keating, who serve as de facto apologists for the revolution,
which they find a hundred ways to minimize and explain away. With
the pre-conciliar past now hazy at best, most “conservatives” do not
recognize that in the Church’s long history we have seen time and
again a principled resistance by loyal Catholics to sudden changes
in the Church, even in relatively trivial matters. Just as it was
licit for the Asian synods to refuse Pope Victor’s direct command to
change the date on which they observed Easter, so also is it licit
to resist the unprecedented and hugely destructive changes being
imposed upon us in the post-conciliar period, and to work and pray
for the ultimate reversal of these changes.
I believe Keating and his fellow “conservative”
traditionalist-bashers know this in their heart of hearts. If I may
be permitted to indulge in a bit of amateur psychology, I would
venture that the strange preoccupation of certain “conservatives”
with traditionalists—whom they denounce far more often and far more
harshly than any true enemy of the Church—is but a reflection of
their inner conviction that traditionalists legitimately oppose the
ruinous post-conciliar changes they should have opposed, but did
not. “Conservative” leaders understand, at least implicitly, that
the very existence of a traditionalist movement within the Church
demonstrates that they too could have resisted the changes without
ceasing to be Catholics, yet history will record that they did
absolutely nothing. It would be very convenient indeed if
traditionalists could somehow be declared non-Catholics, so that the
conservatives’ failure to act could thus be seen as exemplary “trust
in the Church” and the only Catholic way to behave. (Traditionalists
will be spared this treatment, however, if they meet two
requirements: stay on the Indult reservation and keep quiet about
the post-conciliar revolution. Keating, et al. condescendingly
describe these people as “responsible” traditionalists. While I
myself attend an Indult Mass, I am accused of “entry into schism”
because I do not fulfill the second requirement.)
So, just as liberals in secular society employ
epithets—“anti-Semite,” “homophobe,” “racist”—to marginalize and
destroy people whose arguments they are unable to answer and do not
wish to be heard, Keating and his fellows hurl the epithet “schism”
to marginalize and destroy traditionalists. But worse than the
secular liberals, these conservatives use this demagogic trick
against their own brothers in the Faith.
I can think of no other answer to the mystery of why “conservatives”
like Karl Keating, Stephen Hand and Alphonse Matt are so eager to
accuse traditionalists of the crime of schism, yet so loath to make
the same accusation against any of the neo-modernists who are
dismantling the Church before their very eyes, often in direct
disobedience to explicit papal commands to refrain from what they
are doing. (Despite its endless criticism of Amchurch scandals, The
Wanderer has never once, to my knowledge, called even the worst
neo-modernist Church-wrecker a schismatic.) If there is another
explanation for the mystery, I would like to hear it.
Well, Mr. Keating?
The Problem of Novelty
Our debate with the “conservatives” shows that the post-conciliar
crisis can be summed up in one word: novelty. We have seen how the
“conservative” Catholic tends to condemn the traditionalist Catholic
for the latter’s instinctive opposition to novelty, failing to
recognize that this instinct is as important to the health of the
Church as the instinct of self-preservation is to the health of
living creatures.
The Church’s perennial counsel against the embrace of novelties was
recapitulated by Pope Saint Pius X in his monumental encyclical
Pascendi: But for Catholics nothing
will remove the authority of the second Council of Nicea, where it
condemns those ‘who dare, after the impious fashion of heretics, to
deride the ecclesiastical traditions, to invent novelties of some
kind...or endeavor by malice or craft to overthrow any one of the
legitimate traditions of the Catholic Church’ . . . . Wherefore the
Roman Pontiffs, Pius IV and Pius IX, ordered the insertion in the
profession of faith of the following declaration: ‘I most firmly
admit and embrace the apostolic and ecclesiastical traditions and
other observances and constitutions of the Church.’ The
“conservatives” have no answer to the claim that Saint Pius X would
be more horrified than any traditionalist by the post-conciliar
novelties. They have no answer because they know it is true. The
sensus catholicus abhors innovation; and not just innovation in what
“conservatives” misleadingly call the “substance” of the Faith—as if
everything else could be changed with safety. The teaching of St.
Pius X, echoed by all his predecessors, is that not only apostolic
Tradition, but all the ecclesiastical traditions and customs which
have been woven into the life of the Church over the centuries must
be defended against unnecessary and dramatic change, lest the
Church’s commonwealth be so disrupted that the faithful are thrown
into a state of confusion and alienation which endangers the Faith
itself.
It is indisputable that since 1960 the Church has been overtaken by
a swarm of utterly unprecedented novelties: a new rite of Mass, a
new liturgical calendar, new sacramental rituals, a new ecumenism, a
new rapprochement with non-Christian religions, a new “dialogue with
the world,” a new rule of life in seminaries, priestly orders and
convents, a “new evangelization,” and even an entirely new
vocabulary to replace what Hand belittles as “high metaphysical
abstractions” in the Church’s pre-conciliar teaching.
As Cardinal Newman showed in his Essay on the Development of
Christian Doctrine, the sudden emergence of some novelty in the
Church which is not the natural and almost imperceptible outgrowth
of everything that came before it would be a sign, not of life and
growth, but of corruption—just as the sudden emergence of a tumor is
a sign of corruption in the human body. It is manifest that every
one of the suddenly emergent post-conciliar novelties has produced a
corresponding corruption in the Church:
§ The new liturgy has produced a loss
of Eucharistic faith and respect for the Blessed Sacrament.
§ The new liturgical calendar and cycle of readings have produced
(as Msgr. Klaus Gamber noted) a loss of the sense of place and a
diminished inculcation of Scriptural lessons, especially the “hard
sayings” of Scripture, which have been largely eliminated or
neutralized by tendentious translations that are really dishonest
paraphrases.
§ The new ecumenism has produced a relative protestantization of the
Catholic liturgy and faithful, accompanied by the confirmation of
Protestants in their errors and the accelerated moral and doctrinal
decomposition of Protestant sects over the course of the “ecumenical
dialogues.” (Ironically enough, the evangelical sects which have
shunned the ecumenical venture are those which remain closest to
Catholic moral teaching.)
§ The new rapprochement with non-Christian religions has produced
the near-extinction of the traditional missionary activity of the
Church which aimed at saving souls whose false religions imprisoned
them in darkness (as Pius XI described Islam, for example); and this
development has been accompanied by the perception that good hope is
to be entertained for the salvation of all non-Christians—precisely
the proposition condemned in Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors.10
§ The new sacramental rituals have produced a loss of the
understanding of what the sacraments mean, baptism in particular
having become a mere initiation rite, with the subject of original
sin never mentioned.
§ As Paul VI admitted, “the opening to the world has produced a
veritable invasion of the Church by worldly thinking;” the world, on
the other hand, has only hastened to descend toward utter barbarity,
while Church authorities continue to insist upon “dialogue” rather
than teaching with the authority of God, condemning error and
warning the world that its sins merit eternal damnation.
§ The reform of the seminaries, the priestly orders and the convents
has produced an emptying of all three, and a deeply neo-modernist
formation in the few men and women who still enter. (Only a return
to the traditional rule and formation in some places has produced
new vocations in any great numbers.)
§ The “new evangelization” (in conjunction with the new ecumenism
and the new liturgy) has produced a profound loss of conversions and
vocations compared with the immediate pre-conciliar period, but also
a great number of semi-autonomous “ecclesial movements” of bizarre
character, which have sprouted like weeds in the devastated
vineyard. These include a frenzied, pan-denominational, charismatic
gnosticism, horrifying to behold, which replaces the sound piety and
inward composure exemplified by the saints of the Church. On the
matter of the Church’s new vocabulary, the search for new way of
“speaking to the world” has produced a mind-boggling collection of
buzzwords lacking any of the classical precision of Catholic
doctrine: “ecumenism,” “ecumenical venture,” “dialogue,” “ecumenical
dialogue,” “interreligious dialogue,” “responsible parenthood,”
“solidarity,” “collegiality,” “partial communion,” “imperfect
communion,” “sister churches,” “reconciled diversity,” “what unites
us is greater than what divides us” (divided unity in the Faith
being impossible), “inculturation,” “Church of the new Advent,” “the
new Springtime,” “the civilization of love,” and so on and so forth.
Never in Church history has the thinking of Churchmen been so
dominated by neologisms which have no precise meaning. And never has
the Church’s message been so uncertain, as even the recent Synod of
European bishops was forced to admit.
In sum, the historical record of the post-conciliar novelties is
indisputably a record of corruption, failure and confusion in every
area those novelties have touched. As Cardinal Ratzinger has
candidly admitted: “The results of the
Council seem cruelly to have contradicted the expectations everybody
had, beginning with John XXIII and Paul VI . . .[W]e have been
confronted instead with a continuing process of decay that has gone
on largely on the basis of appeals to the council, and thus has
discredited the council in the eyes of many people.”11
Cardinal Ratzinger went on to say: “It is my opinion that the
misfortunes the Church has met with in the last twenty years are not
due to the true council itself, but to an unleashing within the
council of latent, aggressive, polemical and centrifugal forces.”
Some sixteen years after the Cardinal’s remarks, however, the
evidence of an even deeper “process of decay” permits us to advance
beyond the Cardinal’s opinion to say that the “true council” is
indeed part of the problem. And the problem is novelty. In Part 4
of his tract Hand claims that John Paul II has decreed definitively
that the Council and all the innovations it engendered are perfectly
in line with Tradition, and that no one may suggest or even think
otherwise. To support this wildly extravagant claim he quotes, not
an encyclical, a motu proprio or some other formal papal teaching
addressed to the universal Church, but a single sentence from a
speech by John Paul II to a symposium on the implementation of
Vatican II: “To read the council assuming it supposes a rupture with
the past, when in reality it is aligned with the everlasting faith,
is clearly erroneous.”12
In the first place, Hand exhibits typical “conservative” confusion
about the scope of the Magisterium when he asserts that a papal
speech to a symposium means that “Rome has spoken” and that “the
question is closed for any Catholic.” If papal speeches to
particular groups could bind the universal Church, then it would be
inevitable that the Pope would bind the Church to error. For
example, every Catholic would now be required to believe, as the
Pope declared in a sermon on January 27, 1999, that “the dignity of
human life must never be taken away, even in the case of someone who
has done great evil” and that the death penalty should be abolished
as “cruel and unnecessary.”13
Clearly, no Catholic is obliged to believe that
the death penalty may never be imposed or that it should be
abolished as a moral evil. Such a teaching is manifestly contrary to
all Tradition—as was the repeated sermonizing of John XXII on the
particular judgment.
Moreover, to say that the Council is “aligned with the
everlasting Faith” or that the Council as a whole does not “suppose
a rupture with the past” is not quite the same thing as saying that
every formulation in the conciliar texts is perfectly in line with
Tradition. We recall that in the nota praevia to Lumen Gentium the
council expressly disclaimed any intention to formulate binding
doctrine unless it openly declared such intention. The Council
wished to have the freedom to indulge in non-traditional “pastoral”
formulations whose very novelty alarmed a number of the council
fathers, leading to the nota praevia. On this point we have the
posthumously revealed testimony of Bishop Thomas Morris, a council
father: I was relieved when we were
told that this Council was not aiming at defining or giving final
statements on doctrine, because a statement of doctrine has to be
very carefully formulated and I would have regarded the Council
documents as tentative and liable to be reformed.14
Once the Council was over, however, we were suddenly told that it
had been a veritable Vesuvius of Catholic doctrine. This hardly
seems fair to the council fathers who were assured otherwise by the
Council’s theological commission.
Considering the Pope’s symposium statement further, it does not seem
to me that the Holy Father was saying exactly what Hand claims he
said. Here we find, once again, that Hand has carefully cropped a
quotation to avoid certain words he wishes to conceal. In the
immediately preceding sentence in the Zenit news account from which
Hand quotes, the following appears: “[I]t is necessary not to lose
the genuine intention of the Council Fathers; on the contrary, it
must be recovered, overcoming cautious and partial interpretations
that impeded expressing to the maximum the novelty of the Council
Magisterium.”
In other words, the Pope said that the Church has been too
cautious in applying the novelty of conciliar teaching. Here John
Paul echoes the sentiment of Paul VI, who declared that: “The
important words of the Council are newness and updating ... the word
newness has been given to us as an order, as a program.”15
And, when one consults the original text of the Pope’s symposium
remarks, one finds the following sentence immediately after the one
selected by Hand:
What has been believed by ‘everyone,
always and everywhere’ is the authentic newness that enables every
era to perceive the light that comes from the word of God’s
Revelation in Jesus Christ. Hand’s misuse of this text is
shameful, but it serves as a good example of how “conservatives” try
to conceal the full import of what the Pope says so often about
Vatican II in order to maintain the fiction that it fits seamlessly
into the line of all the other councils. It cannot be denied,
however, that Vatican II is the first Council in the history of the
Church whose strict continuity with Tradition is not self-evident.
If it were self-evident, Cardinal Ratzinger would not be making
comments like the following: The
Second Vatican Council has not been treated as part of the entire
living Tradition of the Church, but as an end of Tradition, a new
start from zero. . . . That which was previously considered most
holy—the form in which the liturgy was handed down—suddenly appears
as the most forbidden of all things, the one thing that can safely
be prohibited. It is intolerable to criticize decisions which have
been taken since the Council; on the other hand, if men make
question of ancient rules, or even of the great truths of the faith
. . . nobody complains or only does so with great moderation . . .
.All of this leads a great number of people to ask themselves if the
Church of today is really the same as the Church of yesterday, or if
they have changed it for something else without telling people. The
one way in which Vatican II can be made plausible is to present it
as it is; one part of the unbroken, the unique tradition of the
Church and of her faith.16
But why should the Council have to be “made plausible” if, as the
“conservatives” would have it, the Council’s plausibility—that is,
its complete harmony with Tradition—is already perfectly clear?
Some “conservative” commentators are a bit more honest than Mr.
Hand. Taking the bull by the horns, they openly admit that John Paul
II is an innovator who sees in Vatican II (as did Paul VI) a mandate
for progressivist undertakings. Leading “conservative” George Sim
Johnston, for example, refers to the “historically radical ecumenism
of John Paul II,” and (speaking of a compendium of his fellow
conservatives’ writings) admits that:
[B]y any historical measure, the
‘conservatives’ in this volume are progressive Catholics. Unlike the
Sadducees on the Catholic left and the Pharisees on the truly
Catholic right, the ‘conservatives’ in this volume understand the
pontificate of John Paul II because they understand the Second
Vatican Council. They understand that Christ founded a teaching
Church whose doctrines are not subject to whim and manipulation. But
they also realize that the Church, being human and organic, has to
change.17
There we have it all: To follow the “historically radical ecumenism
of John Paul II” and the teaching of the Second Vatican Council is
to be a progressive, leaving behind forever the Pharisees who have
refused to “change.” The Council, which only the progressives and
John Paul II really understand, has become the new hermeneutical key
to the practice of the Faith—because, you see, the Church just “has
to change.” (At least Johnston has the decency to acknowledge that
traditionalists comprise the “truly Catholic right.” Unlike Hand,
Keating and Al Matt, Johnston does not stoop to the cheap trick of
positing a false equivalence between heretics and loyal Catholics.)
Similar admissions come from “conservative” commentator John
Beaumont in his review of George Weigel’s new biography of the Pope:
One possible cause for concern in relation to the phenomenon of Pope
John Paul II is the sometimes breathtaking nature of his innovative
teaching. It is natural for Catholics to be wary and wonder whether
all of this can fit in with the tradition.18
Yes, it would be only natural for Catholics to be wary of
breathtaking innovations in the teaching of a Pope on faith and
morals! Beaumont lets this bomb drop without seeming to notice the
explosion. He contents himself with the observation that since we
have a “guaranteed Church” we should simply assume that breathtaking
innovations are merely “developments” of settled doctrine. Such
explanations are simply not satisfactory. They offer no answer to
the sedevacantists, who know a lame argument when they see one.
There must be a more sensible explanation for the “phenomenon of
John Paul II” and the post-conciliar developments as a whole than:
“All these breathtaking innovations are traditional, don’t worry
about it.”
Let me propose an explanation here.
Doctrine or Not? When the Holy
Father used the phrase “everyone, always and everywhere” in the
address to the symposium on Vatican II, he was referring to the
criterion by which the Church knows that a doctrine is Catholic:
that everyone, everywhere in the Church, has always believed it. To
use the formula of St. Vincent Lerins: quod ubique, quod semper,
quod ab omnibus creditum est (what has been believed everywhere,
always and by all). Even papal pronouncements respect this
criterion, and in cases of the infallible definition of doctrine are
aimed precisely at settling once and for all what the Church has
always believed. John Paul II here proposes a resolution of the
apparent oxymoron of novel tradition by suggesting that the Church
has always believed in “authentic newness.” But if the Church has
always believed in authentic newness, then why has the Church not
always said so? And in what, exactly, does this authentic newness
consist in terms of Catholic doctrine? Is there any real doctrinal
content to the conciliar “program” of “newness” remarked by Paul VI?
That the Council and the conciliar popes have given us something
utterly novel is admitted in the Pope’s inaugural encyclical,
Redemptor Hominis. Referring in part to “the new ecumenical
orientation” of the Church introduced by the Council and the
conciliar popes, His Holiness declared:
Entrusting myself fully to the Spirit of truth, therefore, I am
entering into the rich inheritance of the recent pontificates. This
inheritance has struck deep roots in the awareness of the Church in
an utterly new way, quite unknown previously, thanks to the Second
Vatican Council, which John XXIII convened and opened and which was
later successfully concluded and perseveringly put into effect by
Paul VI . . .19
Before Vatican II, when has a pope ever proclaimed a whole “new
orientation” of the Church, ecumenical or otherwise? And what other
council in Church history disclosed anything “utterly new” and
“quite unknown previously” in the realm of doctrine? How can a
doctrine of the Church, if it is a doctrine, be at one and the same
time always believed, yet something “quite unknown” before 1965? Are
we now to understand that the Holy Spirit could have left the Church
unaware of some important truth of the Faith for nearly 2,000 years?
Or is the Pope referring to Catholic doctrine at all when he speaks
of such things as the “awareness of the Church” and her “new
ecumenical orientation”? What is the import of such phrases, and all
the other ones I have mentioned above, if they are not doctrines a
Catholic must believe?
As the First Vatican Council solemnly declared, not even the Pope
can give us new doctrines of the Faith:
For, the Holy Spirit was not promised to the Successors of Peter
that by His revelation they might disclose new doctrine, but that by
His help they might guard the revelation transmitted through the
apostles and the deposit of faith, and might faithfully set it
forth.20
The Pope is divinely appointed to guard, explicate and pass on the
content of Revelation descended from the Apostles, but he is
incapable of discovering therein any new doctrines because they have
not been revealed to us by God. No one denies that there has been
legitimate development of doctrine over the centuries, and more
explicit and binding statements of what has always been believed.
But “breathtaking” doctrinal innovations in the space of a single
pontificate, or “developments” of doctrine which are “utterly new”
and “quite unknown previously,” have never been seen in Church
history.
Therefore, it would appear to me to be impossible that the post-conciliar
novelties in teaching (we are not here considering disciplinary
measures or canon law which are subject to change) could be Catholic
doctrines in the proper sense. Yet we have before us today a
multitude of seemingly novel teachings on everything from
“ecumenism,” to “dialogue” to relations with non-Catholic religions,
to the death penalty. What, then, are we dealing with in the midst
of this unparalleled profusion of ecclesial novelties? Is it
doctrine which we must believe, or is it something less than that?
In my article “Viruses in the Body of Christ” (The Latin Mass, Fall
1998), I offered a layman’s view that in the post-conciliar period
the Devil has unleashed his most brilliant stratagem against the
Church: the introduction of purely notional teachings which convey
particles of an idea but do not actually contain a coherent
doctrine, just as viruses are particles of DNA or RNA but do not
comprise a coherent living thing. Like viruses, these notional
teachings contain just enough information to reproduce themselves
and infect genuine concepts, which are the “cells” of the Church’s
perennial teaching. By means of these verbal viruses (“ecumenism,”
“dialogue,” etc.) the human element of the Church can be thrown into
confusion and disarray without any pope or council having taught any
explicit error against the Faith.
For example, where is the Catholic doctrine in the new notion of
“ecumenism,” which seems to be nothing more or less than a new
ecclesial attitude combined with an assortment of activities such as
interfaith “dialogues,” common prayer with non-Catholics and joint
liturgical services, in none of which we are required to engage
ourselves. True, the Pope teaches that these activities are good,
that they promote “Christian unity,” and that the Church is
“irrevocably committed” to them, but the Pope’s factual appraisal of
the success of the ecumenical venture and its future are not
doctrines of the Catholic faith. Nor is what the Pope does in the
name of ecumenism possessed of a doctrinal character.
I invite the reader to consider whether any of the post-conciliar
novelties are reducible to a concrete statement of Catholic doctrine
that would bind the universal Church to adhere, with a religious
assent or the assent of faith, to a proposition Catholics had not
always believed before Vatican II. I am convinced that no such
discrete doctrinal propositions can be found anywhere in the
teaching of the Council or the conciliar popes. Rather, it seems to
me that the post-conciliar novelties all operate below the doctrinal
level and are to be found entirely in the realm of the pastoral in
various forms: activities, “orientations,” undertakings,
initiatives, dialogues, exhortations, opinions, observations,
predictions and statements of fact, and ambiguous new expressions,
all of which lack the character of binding Catholic doctrine.
The Sedevacantist Question As
a matter of fact, the failure of the post-conciliar novelties to
rise to the level of formal, binding doctrine, even though they are
“teachings” of a kind, is precisely why the sedevacantists are wrong
to accuse the Council and the conciliar popes of heresy and to
declare the papal throne empty. As already noted, there can be no
heresy without the obstinate denial of some article of divine and
Catholic faith, and this cannot be found in any of the
pronouncements of the conciliar popes; nor can their conduct, as
such, constitute a formal heresy, for heresy is a propositional
offense, not a form of physical misconduct.
This is not to say that one cannot find numerous apparent
propositional contradictions between pre- and post-conciliar
teaching on a number of lesser matters, and the “conservatives” are
dreaming when they deny this. (I say apparent, because only the
Church herself can finally resolve these matters, and this is one
reason the authors have issued their Statement calling for
“respectful discussion with Church authorities.”) But none of these
contradictions involve the formal repudiation of any article of
divine and Catholic faith, even if it can be shown that the new
teachings tend materially to oppose Catholic tradition. It is no use
ignoring such things as the following:
§ A line of pre-conciliar popes condemned any collaboration with
communists or participation in communist movements because of danger
to the faith of Catholics from any close cooperation with atheists,
but Pope John XXIII taught the novel distinction that one could join
a communist movement, so long as one did not become a communist,
because the “good” social elements of a movement can be considered
apart from its immoral founding principles—precisely the distinction
rejected as a trap for the faithful by Pius XI in Divini
Redemptoris.21
§ The pre-conciliar popes, especially Saint Pius V, uniformly
condemned the notion of tampering with the received and approved
rite of Mass, but Paul VI approved an entirely new rite which
Cardinals Bacci and Ottaviani were constrained to protest was “a
striking departure from the theology of the Mass” as taught by
Trent.
§ The pre-concilar popes taught that the Latin liturgy must be
preserved as a barrier against heresy, but Paul VI taught that it
must be abandoned because “understanding of prayer is more important
than the silken garments in which it is royally dressed . . .”22
§ The pre-concilar popes condemned the idea of an all-vernacular
Mass in which the Roman Canon is said aloud, but Paul VI approved it
and pronounced it good, as does his successor.23
§ The pre-conciliar popes forbade women altar servers, as did John
Paul II himself, but he later reversed his own decision to defend
the tradition, and now teaches that altar girls are good for the
liturgy.24
§ The pre-conciliar popes and canon law condemned any common worship
with Protestants as a danger to the Faith, but the council opened
the door to it and John Paul II often engages in it and commends it.25
§ The pre-conciliar popes taught unanimously with Pius XI that “the
union of Christians can only be promoted by promoting the return to
the one true Church of those who are separated from it . . .”, yet
this teaching has been abandoned in favor of an ecumenical “search
for unity” with Protestant sects. Cardinal Ratzinger has made it
clear that ecumenism does not seek the dissolution of non-Catholic
“confessions” or the conversion of all the Protestants to
Catholicism, which he describes as a “maximum demand” that offers
“no real hope of unity.”26
§ The pre-conciliar popes taught that the schismatic Orthodox must
return to the Catholic Church, but the Balamand Statement, whose
teaching is commended by the Pope in Ut Unum Sint, 60, states that
thanks to “radically altered perspectives and thus attitudes”
engendered by Vatican II, the Catholic Church will train new priests
“to pave the way for future relations between the two Churches,
passing beyond the out-dated ecclesiology of return to the Catholic
Church . . . .”27
§ The pre-conciliar popes taught that the Catholic Church and the
Mystical Body of Christ are one and the same thing and that that the
Catholic Church is the one true Church, but the Balamand Statement
declares that “the Orthodox Churches recognize each other as sister
Churches, responsible together for maintaining the Church of God in
fidelity to the divine purpose...”27A What exactly is this Church of
God? How can this Church of God be faithful to the divine purpose if
it contains schismatic churches within itself?
§ The act of consecration of the world to the Sacred Heart
promulgated by Pius XI only 35 years before Vatican II, prays for
the deliverance of souls from “the darkness of idolatry or of
Islamism,” but Vatican II teaches in Lumen Gentium, 16 that the
Muslims “‘together with us adore the one merciful God.” It is
difficult to see how the Muslims could be in spiritual darkness
while adoring the same God together with us.
§ Although the Church has condemned and opposed the diabolical
religion of Islam since it was first invented by a camel driver,
John Paul II (citing Lumen Gentium, 16) recently declared that “the
two religions (Catholicism and Islam) can be signs of hope, making
the world more aware of the wisdom and mercy of God,” and he further
declared in February of this year “May Saint John the Baptist
protect Islam . . .”28
§ In Quanta Cura and the appended Syllabus of Errors, Pope Pius IX
condemned the errors of liberalism on which modern political
societies are based, including the principle that “liberty of
conscience and of worship is the proper right of every man, and
should be proclaimed and asserted by law in every correctly
established society,” but in Dignitatis Humanae Vatican II taught
that “religious freedom must be given such recognition in the
constitutional order of society as will make it a civil right.”
Cardinal Ratzinger openly admits that Dignitatis Humanae (together
with Gaudium et spes) is “a countersyllabus, a revision of the
Syllabus of Pius IX” which corrects “the one-sidedness (!) of the
position adopted by the Church under Pius IX and Pius X.”29
§ The pre-conciliar teaching (repeated even in the 1992 version of
the Catechism, but since deleted) affirmed the right and duty of the
state to impose the death penalty for sufficiently grave offenses,
but John Paul II has recently taught that the death penalty is
“cruel and unnecessary” and should never be imposed “even in the
case of someone who done a great evil.”30
He thus contradicts the 1992 version of the
Catechism he himself approved.
§ The pre-conciliar popes, following the teaching of Saint Paul,
taught that the wife is subject to the authority of the husband and
must obey him as the Church obeys Christ (assuming the husband’s
commands are just and moral), but John Paul II has taught that St.
Paul meant that this subjection is mutual and that he was merely
speaking in a way suited to the culture of his time.31
These examples of apparent contradictions between pre and post-conciliar
teaching could be multiplied. Added to these are utterly novel and
often scandalous papal actions in line with these notions which we
have been discussing throughout—actions which would have elicited
screams of horror from any pope before 1960.
Now, for someone who is willing to overlook crucial distinctions and
leap to unwarranted conclusions about the present crisis, it would
be easy to say that all of this is “heresy” and that we have had no
pope since John XXIII. But a careful examination of these novelties
and apparent contradictions, one by one, shows that none of them
involves the formal denial of an article of divine and Catholic
faith, nor an attempt to impose upon the Church, as a matter to be
believed by the faithful, any explicit theological error. Not even
the statement “May Saint John the Baptist protect Islam” is heresy,
properly speaking, since the pope’s public expression of a wish that
a false religion receive divine protection, while scandalous, does
not translate into a direct denial of any article of Faith.
The sedevacantists can point to innumerable facts which justify the
conclusion that we are living through the worst crisis in Church
history, but they cannot show that the conciliar popes have lost
their offices through heresy, which judgment only the Church herself
could make in any case. Yet in view of the mountain of empirical
evidence of precipitous ecclesial decline immediately following the
Council, can it be denied any longer that the swarm of novelties the
council engendered—that program and order of “newness” remarked by
Paul VI—have tended materially to oppose the pre-conciliar teaching
of the Church? What else could account for the “process of decay”
admitted by Cardinal Ratzinger?
As Paul VI himself rightly observed (without yet admitting the cause
of it all): “It is almost as if the Church were attacking herself.”32
On another occasion he admitted that “the opening to the world has
become a veritable invasion of worldly thinking. We have perhaps
been too weak and imprudent.”33
History has demonstrated to anyone in possession
of his senses that the word “perhaps” can be omitted from Paul’s
admission.
Whatever can go wrong will go wrong, even in the Catholic Church.
Our Lord’s promise of divine assistance to His Church did not mean
that her human members would be unable to inflict upon her the
gravest possible wounds, short of the fatal wound of a formal
defection from the Faith. That everything which can go wrong seems
to have gone wrong at once is no excuse for abandoning the Holy
Father to the unproven theological theory of the empty papal chair,
or for leaving him to the tender mercies of the “conservatives” who
think that mindless applause for every papal word and deed is the
way to show true loyalty to our father.
The sedevacantists and the conservatives are animated by the same
error: that the Magisterium embraces whatever the Pope says or does
that touches upon faith or morals.34
Proceeding from this error, they reach different but equally
untenable conclusions: The former insists that we believe in the
oxymoron of novel tradition or a “Magisterium” that contradicts
itself, while the latter insists that we have had no Pope since John
XXIII. Thank you, but no thank you. The traditionalists I defend
have been in just the right place all along: the post-conciliar
novelties are neither Magisterial nor heretical; they do not bind
the Church to an act of belief in what is wrong. The Pope is still
the Pope, and yet this is the worst crisis the Church has ever
endured, precisely because the conciliar popes have tried to deny
its existence and have persisted in the manifestly ruinous novelties
which brought it about.
What are Catholics to do in the face of this terrible mystery? Shall
we do nothing? Shall we applaud? Or shall we do what the authors of
the Statement have done and declare our resistance to what is
happening? A Return to the
Statement Keeping in mind all of the considerations I
have tried to present here, we can return to the Statement and
confront its most controversial aspects in the proper
perspective—the perspective of an ecclesial crisis almost beyond
imagining. The authors declare: In the
face of the situation described in Items II, III and IV, the lay
Catholics who direct this document to Your Holiness are obliged in
conscience to declare themselves in a state of resistance relative
to the teachings of Vatican Council II, Popes John XXIII and Paul
VI, and your teachings and actions that are objectively contrary to
the prior ordinary and extraordinary papal Magisterium. In
conjunction with this, the authors also declare a “suspension of
obedience to the aforementioned progressivist teachings and the
authorities who desire to impose them upon us.”
It would be easy, if one were malicious, to extract these statements
from their total context—and from the entire historical context of
the crisis itself—and use them to attempt to indict the authors for
“objective schism” or some other trumped-up delict. As we have seen
with Hand’s, Keating’s and Alphonse Matt’s attacks, this exercise
involves deliberately overlooking the crucial point, made clear by
the signers, that they are resisting only certain post-conciliar
novelties and have not rejected papal authority in itself, but
rather appeal to it for the undoing of the novelties. Isn’t it odd
how the accusers pay less attention to the actual text in dealing
with the Statement than the Vatican does in dealing with the
writings of flaming heretics? Isn’t this reckless presumption of
guilt all the more reprehensible when one considers that among the
accusers is Michael Matt’s own cousin, Alphonse Matt?
Michael Matt and John Vennari have confirmed to me that their
thinking in contributing to and signing the Statement accords with
the case I have made here for a balanced approach to the crisis, one
that accounts for, rather than ignoring, the empirical evidence:
While the vast conciliar and post-conciliar program of innovation
tends materially to oppose the perennial teaching of the Church in a
number of areas, it does not involve any formal contradiction of an
article of divine and Catholic faith. The post-conciliar novelties
have not been imposed upon the universal Church as matters of
Catholic doctrine and belief, so that the indefectibility of the
Church has not been implicated in the new teachings and practices.
The conciliar popes are valid popes.
As this entire discussion should make clear, moreover, the posited
“suspension of obedience” largely operates only in the potential. If
one thinks about it for a moment, one can see that there is no
doctrinally binding papal command which the signers are actually
disobeying at present. Let us suppose, however, that the Pope were
to order everyone in the Church to attend joint liturgical services
with pro-abortion Protestants, such as the Vespers service His
Holiness conducted with Lutheran “Bishops” in St. Peter’s Basilica.
Any reasonable Catholic could see why such a command would have to
be resisted. The “resistance” involved is more a question
prescinding from—not attaching oneself to—certain novelties which a
Catholic is not bound to embrace as doctrine or as practice in the
first place. (For example, no one is obliged to engage in
“ecumenical activities” or to attend the new Mass as opposed to some
other rite of the Church.) This form of resistance also involves
presenting arguments against the novelties and petitioning for their
rescission.
That the “suspension of obedience” does not relate to any concrete
doctrine is the very reason Hand failed to answer my challenge that
he identify in what respect exactly the accused are guilty of
“opposition to the living Magisterium.” There is no question,
however, that the phrase “suspension of obedience” serves to
highlight the gravity of our situation and to act as the vehicle by
which the signers intend to make known their resistance and their
immediate desire for dialogue with ecclesial authority.
What is more, concerning the “progressivist teachings” from which
the signers prescind—and we must remember that even the conservative
George Sim Johnston calls the Pope a “progressive”—they are careful
to note that the sheer volume of John Paul II’s pronouncements, in
so many varied places and forms, makes it impossible to know for
certain which are doctrines for the Church and which are the
opinions of a private doctor, and that consequently “the clarity of
the degree of obedience has been lost...” Let the Church, then, not
Messrs. Hand, Keating and Matt, tell the signers (and us) what is
the degree of obedience, if any, owed to each of the “breathtaking
innovations” in an unprecedented corpus of papal pronouncements
which occupies ten linear feet of shelf space, according to George
Weigel. Mr. Hand Refutes
Himself In finally disposing of Hand’s arguments (if
one can call them that), I need only note that Hand is guilty of
precisely what he condemns in the signers of the Statement. In Part
3 of his own tract, Hand declares as follows:
I myself consider the new rite of Mass inferior so far (we expect
improvements to come) to the Traditional Latin Mass . . . And on
his own Internet site Hand further declares:
[O]ur real crisis today focuses on the liturgy and in the dangerous
ambiguity of Conciliar texts and events.35 Thus, the same man who
demands absolute obedience to “the living Magisterium” publicly
declares that the Church is in crisis because the conciliar popes
imposed an inferior rite of Mass upon the Church; he also dissents
from the repeated and emphatic teaching of both popes that the new
rite is not inferior to the old but a great boon to the Church, and
he accuses an ecumenical Council of officially promulgating
dangerously ambiguous texts which led to dangerously ambiguous
events in the Church.
The unfortunate Mr. Hand fails to recognize that not only the
signers of the Statement but he himself, and millions of other
Catholics around the world, are more or less in a state of
resistance, either explicit or implicit, to the conciliar and post-conciliar
agenda. As Hand’s entire position extinguishes itself in this fatal
self-contradiction, we may bid him goodbye. He has provided a useful
provocation with his diffuse little tract, but we may now say of him
what Newman said of Kingsley: And now
I am in a train of thought higher and more serene than any which
slanders can disturb. Away with you, Mr. Kingsley, and fly into
space. Your name shall occur again as little as I can help, in the
course of these pages. I shall henceforth occupy myself not with
you, but with your charges.
A Plea to the Father Meanwhile, the evidence is
overwhelming that this is the ultimate crisis foretold in Holy
Scripture and by Our Lady of Fatima and Our Lady of La Salette. It
was Pope Saint Pius X, arguably the greatest Pope in Church history,
who declared in E Supremi his moral certainty (only 55 years before
the Council) that the world had entered into the beginning of the
last times foreseen in the Book of the Apocalypse. And was it not
the present Roman Pontiff himself who, in his beautiful sermon at
Fatima on May 13, 2000, warned the Church to avoid the dragon
described in Chapter 12 of the Book of the Apocalypse; the dragon
whose tail sweeps one third of the stars, the consecrated souls,
from heaven? From deep within the failing vision of a perfectible
world in which he has immured himself—the vision of Gaudium et spes
which he helped to craft—our Pope cries out to his Church a warning,
a warning which dispels the beguiling vision and reminds us that he
is, after all, our father and that we must love him.
Our Pope is a man of mystery and contradiction. The same Pope who
ended all further debate on women’s ordination also gave us the
scandal of altar girls. The Pope who has condemned “the culture of
death” and fixed upon the world a phrase that rebukes it in an
unforgettable way, has also legitimated the very preachers of the
culture of death by giving them places of honor beside himself in
public liturgical ceremonies, without rebuking them at all. The Pope
who has presided over great liturgical destruction and called it a
renewal, has also given the banished traditional liturgy a precious
and ever-widening foothold within the official structure of the
Church. The Pope who will beatify Pius IX, the fierce opponent of
“the modern world,” also wishes to beatify John XXIII, “the first
modern pope.” He is our Pope, our father, this man of mystery and
contradiction; and like any father he needs his children, just as
his children need him.
Sometimes the children must resist the father as an act of charity.
The Statement, whatever its deficiencies, ought to be seen as such
an act. Those who condemn the signers so loudly have willfully
blinded themselves to the ultimate cause of the great crisis of
which the Statement is but a symptom. Four children cry out to their
wandering father in his travels throughout a disbelieving world
which will not even follow his teaching on the natural law—no matter
how far he travels, no matter how many crowds there are to cheer him
on. Come home, father, they cry, and put our house in order. But the
accusers rebuke the children for crying out, and they defend the
absence of the distant father.
History will render the final verdict on whether the children who
cried out, or the children who remained silent, were the ones who
served the father most truly. But I think we know already what that
verdict will be. So, I suspect, do our accusers; and this is what
accounts for their present discomfiture.
Notes:
[1] Summa II, II Q. 33, Art. 4
2 De Romano Pontifice, II 30.
3 The Code of Canon Law: A Text and Commentary, Canon Law Society of
America, c. 333.
4 The Wanderer, February 16, 1995.
5 This Rock “March” 1996, p. 22 (This issue actually appeared in
June 1996)
6 Id. p. 22-23
7 The Catholic Encyclopedia (1911). See, http: //www.newadvent.org/cathen/13529a.htm
8 Catholic Encylopedia (1911), p. 262, right-hand column.
8A John, Eric. The Popes: A Concise Biographical History. Roman
Catholic Books; Original Edition, Burns and Oates, Publishers to the
Holy See (1964), p. 253.
9 McBrien, Richard P. The Remaking of the Catholic Church. (1973),
p. 146.
10 “We must have a least good hope concerning the eternal salvation
of all those who in no wise are in the true Church of Christ.”
Syllabus, n. 17. It should be noted that the doctrines of baptism of
desire and invincible ignorance cannot allow one to say that there
is “good hope” for the salvation of those who belong to non-Catholic
religions, since Pius IX himself forbade any speculation to that
effect in his allocution Singulari quaedem:
Not without sorrow we have learned that another error, no less
destructive, has taken up its abode in the souls of many Catholics
who think that one should have good hope of the eternal salvation of
all those who have never lived in the true Church of Christ.
Therefore, they are wont to ask very often what will be the lot and
condition after death of those who have not submitted in any way to
the Catholic faith . . .Far be it from Us, Venerable Brethren, to
presume the limits of divine mercy which is infinite [His Holiness
then expounds the doctrine of invincible ignorance] but as long as
we are on earth, weighed down by this mortal mass which blunts the
soul, let us hold most firmly that, in accordance with Catholic
teaching, there is ‘one God, one faith, one baptism’ [Eph. 4:5]; it
is unlawful to proceed further in inquiry. DZ 1646-1648
11 L’Osservatore Romano, November 9, 1984, later to be known as The
Ratzinger Report.
12 Zenit news report, February 27, 2000.
13 L’Osservatore Romano, weekly English edition, N. 5- 3, February
1999, p. 8.
14 Catholic World News, January 22, 1997. This testimony was
confided to Catholic journalist Kieron Wood with the understanding
that it would not be published until after Bishop Morriss’ death,
which occurred recently.
15 L'Osservatore Romano, July 3, 1974, quoted in Iota Unum, by
Amerio Romano, Sarto House [Kansas City, 1996], p. 112.
16 Statement to the Bishops of Chile, 1988.
17 Crisis, May 1996, p. 6.
18 “A Life for These Times,” CULTURE WARS, May 2000, pp. 46-47
19 Redemptor Hominis, n. 6
20 Denzinger, 1836.
21 From Divini redemptoris: “In the beginning, Communism showed
itself for what it was in all its perversity, but very soon it
realized that it was thus alienating people. It has therefore,
changed its tactics and strives to entice the multitudes by trickery
in various forms, hiding its real designs behind ideas that are in
themselves good and attractive ... Under various names that do not
suggest Communism ... [t]hey try perfidiously to worm their way even
into professedly Catholic and religious organizations ... [t]hey
invite Catholics to collaborate with them in the realm of so-called
humanitarianism and charity; and at times make proposals that are in
perfect harmony with the Christian spirit and the doctrine of the
Church ... See to it, faithful brethren, that the Faithful do not
allow themselves to be deceived.”
22 General Audience, November 26, 1969. Compare, Mediator Dei by
Pius XII and even Veterum Sapientia by John XXIII, both enjoining
preservation of the Latin liturgy. Both documents were swept aside
soon after the Council.
23 Cfr. Auctorem Fidei, Pius VI, nn. 33, 66.
24 Angelus Address, September 3, 1995: “To a large extent, it is a
question of making full use of the ample room for a lay and feminine
presence recognized by the Church’s law. I am thinking, for example,
of theological teaching, the forms of liturgical ministry permitted,
including service at the altar . . . Who can imagine the great
advantages to pastoral care and the new beauty that the Church’s
face will assume, when the feminine genius is fully involved in the
various areas of her life?”
25 Compare the 1917 Code of Canon Law, forbidding any active
participation by Catholics in worship with Protestants; Mortalium
animos by Pius IX, and the 1949 Instruction of the Holy Office on
the “ecumenical movement,” which forbade any form of common worship
at discussion groups authorized by the local bishop, and which
required that the Catholic doctrine on the return of the dissidents
to the one true Church be presented.
26 Ratzinger, Cardinal Josef. Principles of Catholic Theology.
Ignatius Press: San Francisco (1982), 197-198
27 Balamand Statement, nn. 13 and 30
27A Ibid.
28 General Audience Address, May 5, 1999; Prayer and Exhortation on
March 21, 2000 in Wadi Al-Kharrar.
29 Ratzinger, op. cit., p. 381 Father Brian Harrison has argued with
great power that the apparent contradiction between Dignitatis
Humanae and prior teaching is not in the realm of doctrine but
rather public ecclesiastical law, which can be reversed. In
correspondence with him (which he has kindly indulged) I have
focused on the Council’s teaching that there is a natural right to
immunity from coercion even in the public activities of non-Catholic
religions. I do not see how the existence of this natural right can
be reconciled with the teaching of the pre-conciliar popes on the
errors of modern liberty, since none of these popes mentioned such a
right, but rather all of them spoke entirely in terms of a mere
prudential tolerance of false religions by the State, and the notion
of tolerance by definition excludes a right to do what is merely
tolerated. Here, too, only the Church can finally resolve the
problem.
30 Sermon at World Trans Dome, January 27, 1999 in L’Osservatore
Romano, Weekly English Edition, N. 5-3, p. 8.
31 It is impossible to see how, in terms of authority within the
family, there can be two subjects and no ruler. Compare the
following:
Leo XIII On Christian Marriage, n 11: “The husband is the chief of
the family and the head of the wife. The woman, because she is flesh
of his flesh, and bone of his bone, must be subject to her husband
and obey him; not, indeed, as a servant, but as a companion, so that
her obedience shall be wanting in neither honor nor dignity. Since
the husband represents Christ, and since the wife represents the
Church, let there always be, both in him who commands and in her who
obeys a heaven-born love guiding both in their respective duties.
For "the husband is the head of the wife; as Christ is the head of
the Church. . . Therefore, as the Church is subject to Christ, so
also let wives be to their husbands in all things."[18] . . .”
John Paul II, Mulieris Dignitatem, n. 24 : “The author of the Letter
to the Ephesians sees no contradiction between an exhortation
formulated in this way and the words: ‘Wives, be subject to your
husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife.”
(5:22-23). The author knows that this way of speaking, so profoundly
rooted in the customs and religious tradition of the time, is to be
understood and carried out in a new way: as a ‘mutual subjection out
of reverence for Christ’ (cf. Eph 5:21) . . . whereas in the
relationship between Christ and the Church the subjection is only on
the part of the Church, in the relationship between husband and wife
the ‘subjection’ is not one-sided but mutual.”
32Speech of Dec. 8, 1968 to the Lombard College, quoted in Amerio,
op cit. at p.6
33 Speech of 23 November 1973, quoted in Amerio, op. Cit.
34 This error is contrary even to the teaching of Vatican II itself
in Lumen gentium 25, where the Council notes that a papal teaching
is part of the ordinary Magisterium only according to the pope’s
“manifest mind and will. His mind and will in the matter may be
known either from the character of the documents, from his frequent
repetition of the same doctrine, or from his manner of speaking.”
35 http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Itahaca/3251 /ecumod.html.
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[i].. Summa II, II Q. 33, Art. 4
[ii].. De Romano Pontifice, II 30.
[iii].. The Code of Canon Law: A Text and Commentary, Canon Law
Society of America, c. 333.
[iv].. The Wanderer, February 16, 1995.
[v]..This Rock “March” 1996, p. 22 (This issue actually appeared in
June 1996)
[vi].. Id. p. 22-23 . Catholic
Encyclopedia (1911). See, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13529a.htm
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