Traditional
Catholicism
Is
Historical Catholicism
COLUMNIST, New York
Chris Ferrara is not making
my life easy. His column in the
August 31 issue of The Remnant, in my
opinion, could be the best and most systematic essay in defense of the
traditionalist position ever written.
That’s quite a statement, I realize, but it is one that I told him over
the phone in the wee hours of August 18 as we discussed the piece together. I am now more confident than ever that
this whole exchange, instigated by Stephen Hand and The Wanderer, will increase our ranks
considerably. I don’t expect the
willfully blind to be persuaded, but I do expect many, many conservative
Catholics of good will to see that our position is not only not the font of pure
evil that Hand’s caricature would suggest, but is in fact the only sensible and
persuasive approach to the greatest crisis that has ever befallen the Bride of
Christ.
Before delving into the substance of my
final installment, I would like to dispense briefly with just one of Stephen
Hand’s criticisms of my first piece that he expressed in an email screed to his
TCR list. On the matter of
discipline, Hand seems to be having difficulty deciding between two positions:
either that ecclesiastical discipline wasn’t really so tough in the old days
after all, or that the strict discipline of the old days would be inappropriate
to present circumstances. Well,
which is it?
In an email message to his friends in reply to my first article, Hand
tells us that even Pope St. Pius X, after all, didn’t excommunicate wave upon
wave of Modernists. He wrote this
even after I had reminded him in personal correspondence that of course there
are disciplinary measures short of excommunication to which the Pope could and
did have recourse. A recent history
of Modernism notes that quite contrary to Hand’s suggestion, “[t]he disciplinary
regime laid down in the final section of Pascendi—nearly 20 percent of the whole
text—was extremely detailed and rigorous.”
Thus in Pascendi Dominici
Gregis, St. Pius X’s encyclical against Modernism, the Pope recommends that
vigilance committees be established
in every diocese to guard against the spread of Modernism, and that the year
following the issuance of the encyclical, and every three years thereafter,
every bishop report to Rome on the progress of his efforts to eliminate this
heresy. Pius X’s instructions to
the bishops in Pascendi deserve to be
quoted at unusual length:
But of what avail,
Venerable Brethren, will be all Our commands and prescriptions if they be not
dutifully and firmly carried out? In order that this may be done it has seemed
expedient to us to extend to all dioceses the regulations which the Bishops of
Umbria, with great wisdom, laid down for theirs many years ago. “In order,” they
say, “to extirpate the errors already propagated and to prevent their further
diffusion, and to remove those teachers of impiety through whom the pernicious
effects of such diffusion are being perpetuated, this sacred Assembly, following
the example of St. Charles Borromeo, has decided to establish in each of the
dioceses a Council consisting of approved members of both branches of the
clergy, which shall be charged with the task of noting the existence of errors
and the devices by which new ones are introduced and propagated, and to inform
the Bishop of the whole, so that he may take counsel with them as to the best
means for suppressing the evil at the outset and preventing it spreading for the
ruin of souls or, worse still, gaining strength and growth.” We decree,
therefore, that in every diocese a council of this kind, which We are pleased to
name the “Council of Vigilance,” be instituted without delay. The priests called
to form part in it shall be chosen somewhat after the manner above prescribed
for the censors, and they shall meet every two months on an appointed day in the
presence of the Bishop. They shall be bound to secrecy as to their deliberations
and decisions, and in their functions shall be included the following: they
shall watch most carefully for every trace and sign of Modernism both in
publications and in teaching, and to preserve the clergy and the young from it
they shall take all prudent, prompt, and efficacious measures. Let them combat
novelties of words, remembering the admonitions of Leo XIII: “It is impossible
to approve in Catholic publications a style inspired by unsound novelty which
seems to deride the piety of the faithful and dwells on the introduction of a
new order of Christian life, on new directions of the Church, on new aspirations
of the modern soul, on a new social vocation of the clergy, on a new Christian
civilization, and many other things of the same kind.” Language of the kind here
indicated is not to be tolerated either in books or in
lectures.
We order that you do
everything in your power to drive out of your dioceses, even by solemn
interdict, any pernicious books that may be in circulation there. The Holy See
neglects no means to remove writings of this kind, but their number has now
grown to such an extent that it is hardly possible to subject them all to
censure. Hence it happens sometimes that the remedy arrives too late, for the
disease has taken root during the delay. We will, therefore, that the Bishops
putting aside all fear and the prudence of the flesh, despising the clamor of
evil men, shall, gently, by all means, but firmly, do each his own part in this
work, remembering the injunctions of Leo XIII in the Apostolic Constitution Officiorum: “Let the Ordinaries, acting
in this also as Delegates of the Apostolic See, exert themselves to proscribe
and to put out of reach of the faithful injurious books or other writings
printed or circulated in their dioceses.” In this passage the Bishops, it is
true, receive an authorization, but they have also a charge laid upon them. Let
no Bishop think that he fulfills his duty by denouncing to Us one or two books,
while a great many others of the same kind are being published and circulated.
Nor are you to be deterred by the fact that a book has obtained elsewhere the
permission which is commonly called the Imprimatur, both because this may be
merely simulated, and because it may have been granted through carelessness or
too much indulgence or excessive trust placed in the author, which last has
perhaps sometimes happened in the religious orders. Besides, just as the same
food does not agree with everyone, it may happen that a book, harmless in one
place, may, on account of the different circumstances, be hurtful in another.
Should a Bishop, therefore, after having taken the advice of prudent persons,
deem it right to condemn any of such books in his diocese, We give him ample
faculty for the purpose and We lay upon him the obligation of doing so. Let all
this be done in a fitting manner, and in certain cases it will suffice to
restrict the prohibition to the clergy; but in all cases it will be obligatory
on Catholic booksellers not to put on sale books condemned by the Bishop. And
while We are treating of this subject, We wish the Bishops to see to it that
booksellers do not, through desire for gain, engage in evil trade. It is certain
that in the catalogs of some of them the books of the Modernists are not
infrequently announced with no small praise. If they refuse obedience, let the
Bishops, after due admonition, have no hesitation in depriving them of the title
of Catholic booksellers. This applies, and with still more reason, to those who
have the title of Episcopal booksellers. If they have that of Pontifical
booksellers, let them be denounced to the Apostolic See.
Such measures are inadequate
in themselves, writes St. Pius X: “It is not enough to hinder the reading and
the sale of bad books—it is also necessary to prevent them from being published.
Hence, let the Bishops use the utmost strictness in granting permission to
print.” There is also the matter of
periodicals:
With regard to priests who
are correspondents or collaborators of periodicals, as it happens not
infrequently that they contribute matter infected with Modernism to their papers
or periodicals, let the Bishops see to it that they do not offend in this
manner; and if they do, let them warn the offenders and prevent them from
writing. We solemnly charge in like manner the superiors of religious orders
that they fulfill the same duty, and should they fail in it, let the Bishops
make due provision with authority from the Supreme Pontiff. Let there be, as far
as this is possible, a special censor for newspapers and periodicals written by
Catholics. It shall be his office to read in due time each number after it has
been published, and if he find anything dangerous in it let him order that it be
corrected as soon as possible. The Bishop shall have the same right even when
the censor has seen nothing objectionable in a publication.
It is true that St. Pius X
did not excommunicate many people.
But could any honest person, when discussing St. Pius X’s disciplinary
program, simply leave the matter at that and make no mention of any of the
measures cited here? What grade
would we assign to a student writing a paper on Pascendi whose conclusion, after reading
the above, was simply, “St. Pius X didn’t excommunicate many people”? To call this an extremely misleading
summary would be about the least one could say about it. To no one’s surprise, however, this is
precisely Hand’s summary. He makes
no mention whatever of any of the disciplinary action outlined here. I know he knows about all this—since I
told him myself—so what, apart from a deliberate attempt to deceive, can account
for his persistence in repeating this laughably misleading description of the
campaign against Modernism?
The “conservatives” always
have some contrived explanation as to why in the present situation Rome’s
mystifying failure to govern the Church is actually an act of genius. They are deftly avoiding the emergence
of a schism, the conservatives tell us.
To this claim, which is always advanced with no real evidence behind it,
I ask the following: If the Pope is really serious about reforming the Church,
why does he appoint so many liberals?
To this the conservatives will reply by pointing to the appointment of
the likes of Cardinal Francis George, an excellent example of a churchman whose
behavior would have caused an international uproar before the Council but who,
by the conservatives’ absurdly low standards, is now considered downright
heroic. Sometimes, though,
conservatives will argue that the Pope doesn’t really have much influence over
the appointment of bishops. We have
witnessed, therefore, the construction of an impenetrable, non-falsifiable
edifice of excuses, to which the “conservatives” have ceaseless and tiresome
recourse. But surely the Pope has
had some say in at least a few of these appointments, don’t you think? And yet it is safe to say, using
Cardinal Ottaviani as a benchmark, that in the college of cardinals there is not a single conservative. (Cardinal Stickler is the exception,
though he lost his right to vote in the conclave when he turned 80.) If there is any plausibility left in the
claim that the Pope would love to reform things but is afraid he’d bring on a
schism, it vanishes when we remember that, as we shall see below in the
discussion on ecumenism, it is in large part his very own initiatives that need
to be reformed.
In short, we will know when
we have a Pope who is serious about reversing the disaster of the past
thirty-five years. He is not here
yet.
We have plenty of examples of brave popes who used all the force at their
disposal to vindicate traditional Catholicism. Consider the position of Pope St.
Gregory VII (1073-85). The Church
was in desperate need of reform in his day. Simony was rampant and clerical celibacy
had been all but abandoned. When
Gregory moved to reinstate Church tradition he was met with demonstrations of
priests across Europe threatening to resist the Pope forever rather than
relinquish their wives. The
overwhelming majority of German bishops opposed him. But he did not back down. In fact, he became more aggressive
still, going so far as to excommunicate Henry IV. It occurred to him that the reason he
was having such difficulty implementing his reform program was that so much of
the practical authority of naming and investing bishops had passed into the
hands of the state. If he were to
have any hope of achieving real reform, he had to reclaim the Holy See’s
critical prerogative of naming bishops.
For centuries, the bishops’ literacy and administrative talent had been
tapped by kings and the emperor to perform temporal duties around the
realm. Sympathetic bishops were
considered essential to the lay monarch not only for what they could do in the
area of administration, but also for serving to check upstart nobles who were
always seeking to undermine the king’s position. The suggestion that the power to invest
such bishops ought to be taken from him struck Henry IV as the height of
insanity. Gregory knew he faced
opposition of a kind that modern popes can scarcely imagine. Yet he did what was right, and although
he did not live to see ultimate victory, which came a generation later, his
fearlessness vastly increased the prestige of the papacy and set the Church on
the road to the independence she needed to carry out her supernatural
mission.
Hand’s Wanderer series devotes
considerable space to a quite illegitimate appeal to the precedent of the Great
Western Schism of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as an alleged example
of the unintended damage that can be done when a Pope is too vigorous in
pressing the cause of reform. This
is supposed to make us feel impertinent for so much as suggesting that papal
vigor might be the recipe for the current crisis. But the incident reveals nothing of the
kind. For a variety of reasons,
during the period from 1305-1378 the papacy resided not in Rome but in
Avignon. Shortly after returning
the papacy to Rome in 1378, Pope Gregory XI died. During the Avignon papacy, naturally,
the French presence within the sacred college had grown enormously, consisting
now of ninety Frenchmen, fourteen Italians, five Spaniards, and one
Englishman. When the conclave to
elect a successor to Gregory XI was summoned, the assembled cardinals
deliberated amid the sounds of uproar and tumult outside. The local population wanted some kind of
assurance that the papacy would not once again move to Avignon; what they
wanted, therefore, was a Roman pope, or at the very least an Italian. At one point part of the mob managed to
break into the conclave itself and demand that a Roman be elected. The conclave was also interrupted more
than once by rocks being thrown through the windows and the sound of axes
striking the doors.
At last Bartholomew Prignani
(an Italian though not a Roman) was elected, taking the name Urban VI. He moved vigorously against corruption
and worldliness among churchmen—as had
other popes in the past, without incident. Urban, however, upon assuming the papal
office, began acting in an extremely peculiar and belligerent way, quite
uncharacteristic of the temperate Prignani the cardinals had known. We have testimony to the effect that he
began publicly insulting his cardinals, even striking one. Cardinals appearing before him on
standard Church business were violently denounced. Significantly, he told the French
cardinals that he intended to add so many Italians to the sacred college that
French influence would dwindle to nothingness—doubtless alarming to a French
cardinalate that had grown accustomed to its newfound dominance. But he so alienated his cardinals
through his abusive behavior that every
single one of them, Frenchman and non-Frenchman alike, assembled in a second
conclave to elect a new pope. In
fact, it was seriously suggested not only by cardinals at the time but even
today by quite a broad range of historians that his unexpected elevation to the
papacy had rendered Prignani mentally unbalanced, even
insane.
It was in this context,
then, that the cardinals’ decision to declare the original election nullified,
having taken place under duress, and to elect a new pope must be
understood. As Msgr. Hughes notes,
“Had Urban shown ordinary tact and prudence there would never—it seems
certain—have been the second conclave and the election of 1378….” If the Western Schism had really been a
simple case of a vigorous pro-reform party leading to the walkout of a party of
corruption, then why didn’t all the saints favor the Roman (that is, pro-reform,
anti-corruption) line of popes? Are
we going to suggest that some saints favored worldliness and corruption, the
accusation Urban VI hurled at the cardinals? St. Catherine of Siena, St. Catherine of
Sweden, Bl. Peter of Aragon, and Bl. Ursulina of Parma sided with Urban, it is
true, but St. Vincent Ferrer, Bl. Peter of Luxemburg, and St. Colette all sided
with Clement. The Western Schism
was an extraordinarily complex event in which a variety of factors unique to
that episode played a part—of which French-Italian rivalry within the
episcopate, the apparent mental imbalance of Urban VI, and the unusual
circumstances of the first conclave are but a few. It obviously cannot be used, as Hand is
so desperate to do, to make a sweeping point about the alleged dangers of papal
vigor—especially since papal vigor was quite successful when pursued by the
non-insane St. Gregory VII and St. Pius X, to name two. Yet again Hand’s historical references
are seen to possess all the substance of cotton candy.
Pitting
Popes Against Popes
A
frequent complaint by Hand is that we traditionalists “pit one Pope against
another.” I confess that I do not
see what is wrong with that. The
fact is, popes have differed, and sometimes on fairly significant matters. This does not necessarily make one a
heretic and the other an angel, which is how Hand insists on interpreting our
position. It does mean, however,
that one may have been right and the other wrong.
Let
us take as an example Pope St. Gregory the Great (590-604), one of the most
celebrated and revered pontiffs in Church history. His accomplishments were manifold: he
arranged for the evangelization of Britain, he codified the chant that bears his
name, he stared down the ravaging Lombards and provided for the sick and hungry
of Rome. At the same time, it is a
fact that he was part of that minority of churchmen who subjected philosophers
to withering ridicule and were extremely critical of efforts to synthesize the
wisdom of Greek philosophy with the data of divine revelation. In the second century, St. Justin Martyr
had used the term “seeds of the Word” to describe the truths that the Greeks,
living before Christ, had been able to discover. As Justin saw the matter, it was as
though God had prepared the intellectual terrain for the coming of His Son. This intellectual project was carried on
by some of the Church’s brightest lights: Clement of Alexandria, St. Augustine,
the Cappadocian Fathers (St. Basil the Great, St. Gregory of Nyssa, and St.
Gregory Nazianzen), and countless others, culminating in the extraordinary
philosophical edifice constructed by St. Thomas Aquinas. The angry claim of the likes of
Tertullian and Hippolytus that such a synthesis was both pointless and dangerous
loses its force when we recall that it was they themselves, and not those Church
Fathers who were eager to mine the wisdom of the Greeks, who ultimately fell
into heresy. (St. Hippolytus, as we
know, died reconciled.)
Now this is an issue of extraordinary significance and
import. It is at least as important as ecumenism and
some of the other matters regarding which traditionalists have been critical of
the present regime. Yes, I
suppose I am “pitting one Pope against another” when I say that Pope St. Gregory
the Great, however much we may (rightly) venerate him for his extraordinary
accomplishments and personal holiness, was gravely mistaken on this issue and
that Pope Leo XIII, to choose just one example, was absolutely correct (cf. Aeterni Patris, 1879). So what? In suggesting that “pitting one Pope
against another” is an automatic sign of schism or heresy or whatever, Hand is
deliberately stacking the deck against us, ruling out much of our evidence in
advance. A neat trick. But I have no intention of playing by
Hand’s arbitrary rules, especially since, as the Gregory the Great example
reveals so strikingly, they require that we ignore Church history. Hand can block his ears and scream all
he wants, but the facts remain unchanged.
I turn now to the topic of
ecumenism, which is the subject of Hand’s sixth chapter. Hand will brook no criticism of
ecumenism. Sure, some priests
doubtless go too far, but Rome’s program is unobjectionable. In one of his mass-mailed email
commentaries that I continue to ask him not to send me, Hand called me a
Pharisee for expressing my objections to it.
At least one bishop,
however, agrees that we have a right to be heard:
There are people who in the
face of the difficulties or because they consider that the first ecumenical
endeavors have brought negative results would have liked to turn back. Some even
express the opinion that these efforts are harmful to the cause of the Gospel,
are leading to a further rupture in the Church, are causing confusion of ideas
in questions of faith and morals and are ending up with a specific
indifferentism. It is perhaps a good thing that the spokesmen for these opinions
should express their fears.
This bishop is Pope John
Paul II in his inaugural encyclical, Redemptor Hominis (1979). It is true that the Pope went on to say
that he considered such fears to be misplaced. But it’s also fairly significant that
“it is perhaps a good thing” that traditionalists “should express their
fears.” Thus Hand is dissenting
from papal teaching on our right to criticize ecumenism, revealing himself to be
a rigorist of sorts—though only when it comes to defending
innovations.
Hand also argues that Pius
XI’s encyclical Mortalium Animos
(1928), which forbade Catholics to participate in the ecumenical movement of the
day, condemned only “indifferentist ecumenism” (whatever that may mean), and is
therefore quite compatible with the ceaseless ecumenical gatherings and common
prayer meetings of the past thirty-five years. This is simply false. Absolutely nothing in the document would
lead an impartial observer to such a conclusion. The fact is, though, that even on these
grounds Hand’s argument fails, since the major ecumenical initiatives of recent
years have all been
indifferentist.
Before
examining a few of these, it should be noted that as usual, Hand gives us not a
single concrete example of a successful post-Conciliar ecumenical
initiative. He mentions the
Orthodox but (to no one’s surprise) says nothing about the scandalous Balamand
Statement of 1993, more on which below.
He says nothing about the encouragement of joint worship with
non-Catholics, which is indeed quite unprecedented. His entire chapter on ecumenism, in
fact, is a series of vapid generalizations about the need to go after the
straying sheep, as if the conversions brought about one at a time by individual
evangelists were not already an example of this.
Ecumenical relations with
the Anglicans provide a good first example. In 1966 Pope Paul VI and the Archbishop
of Canterbury officially opened channels for dialogue between Catholics and
Anglicans. Toward this end, the
Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) was established. Over the course of the 1970s this body
drew up so-called “Agreed Statements” on the Eucharist, ministry, and
authority. Anyone familiar with the
liturgical changes that brought us the new Mass would recognize in these “Agreed
Statements” the same kind of equivocation regarding sacrifice, the priesthood,
and other such issues that seem to be present in parts of the new rite. (The whole story is told in Michael
Davies’ book The Order of
Melchisedech.) These dreadful
and apparently deliberate ambiguities were ultimately repudiated by Rome in the
early 1990s. This is to be
welcomed. But do we draw any
lessons from this? Perhaps the
crisis in the Church is grave enough that the restoration of order within
Catholicism itself must take precedence over ecumenical initiatives, if only
because, as we have seen time and again, the very liberalism that is destroying
the Church is also, in the realm of ecumenism, producing distinctly unhelpful
and ludicrously ambiguous joint statements. We need to get our own house in order,
remembering that charity begins at
home. In the meantime, as far
as non-Catholics are concerned, there’s always the old-fashioned way of
missionary work and individual conversion.
That used to work pretty well.
Regarding the Orthodox, the Vatican is actively discouraging
proselytism. All of a sudden it
turns out that the Catholic and Orthodox Churches are “Sister Churches,
responsible together for maintaining the Church of God”—which apparently is
something other than the Catholic Church.
This quotation comes from the Balamand Statement of 1993, drawn up under
the auspices of the Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue
between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church. The Vatican’s Cardinal Edward Cassidy,
who heads the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity, was part
of this commission. The relevant
passage goes on: “To pave the way for future relations between the two churches,
passing beyond the outdated [!] ecclesiology of return to the Catholic Church
connected to the problem which is the subject of this document special
preparation will be given the formation of future priests…. In the search for reestablishing unity
there is no question of conversion of people from one Church to the
other….” Simply to catalogue the
novelty and betrayal in this statement would require an article in itself. Was anyone taught in catechism class
that the Catholic and Orthodox Churches were “Sister Churches, responsible
together for maintaining the Church of God”?
Rome has not been altogether straightforward regarding the Jews’ need for
conversion either. The fashionable
doctrine these days is the claim that the Old Covenant that God established with
the Jews, far from having been superseded by the New Covenant of Christ and the
Church, is in fact still in effect.
Thus we have John Paul II telling a Jewish audience: “The first dimension
of this dialogue, that is, the meeting between the people of the Old Covenant,
never revoked by God, and that of the New Covenant, is that the same time a
dialogue within our Church, that is to say, between the first and second part of
her Bible.” “Jews and Christians,”
he went on to say, “as children of Abraham, are called to be a blessing to the
world” by “committing themselves together for peace and justice among all men
and peoples.” Now it is true that
one can find statements in Vatican documents warning that it would be wrong to
view Judaism and Christianity as two parallel ways of salvation, but such
sentiments are usually contained within statements whose tendency is to imply
the very opposite.
I was very interested to see
in the book version of the “We Resist” Statement, which contains a number of
additional essays, John Vennari’s analysis of the changes, both implicit and
explicit, that seem to have taken place in Rome’s views towards the Jews and
their position as regards salvation.
In particular, I have always been struck, frankly, at how meaningless, or
at least deliberately ambiguous, is the prayer for the Jews in the new Good
Friday liturgy. Vennari compares
the prayer for the Jews in three versions of the Roman liturgy: those of 1954,
1964, and 1974. In 1954, the prayer
read:
We pray for the perfidious
Jews: that Our Lord and God may lift the covering off their hearts, so that they
may acknowledge Jesus Christ Our Lord.
Let us pray. Almighty,
eternal God, who does not reject the Jews in Your own mercy: hear our prayers
which we offer for the blindness of this people, that acknowledging the truth of
Your light which is Christ, they may be pulled out of their darkness. Through the same Christ Our Lord. Amen.
The only difference in the
1964 version of the prayer is that the word “perfidious” has been removed; the
remainder of the text is unchanged.
The 1974 prayer, which is what we have now, reads as
follows:
Let us pray for the Jewish
people, the first to hear the word of God, that they may continue to grow in the
love of His Name and in faithfulness to His covenant. Almighty and eternal God, long ago You
gave Your promise to Abraham and his posterity. Listen to Your Church as we pray that
the people You first made Your own may arrive at the fullness of
redemption. We ask this through
Christ our Lord.
Amen.
That the language of this
prayer is as insipid and uninspiring as we’ve come to expect from the reformed
liturgy is the least of its problems.
Does Rome want the Jews to convert to belief in Christ or not? If so, why not simply say so, rather
than forcing good Catholic priests to repeat every Good Friday the meaningless
sentiment that the Jews “continue to grow in the love of [God’s] Name and in
faithfulness to His covenant”? What
does that mean? The appeal to God
later in the prayer that the Jews “arrive at the fullness of redemption” is no
less vague. Are we praying that the
Jews arrive at the fullness of redemption through belief in Christ and
membership in His Church? If so,
why not simply say so?
Even Scott Hahn, no
traditionalist he, has been critical of Cardinal Lustiger, Archbishop of Paris
and one of the Pope’s favorites, for claiming that it is not necessary for the
Jews to convert. (If I recall
correctly, Hahn’s Protestant brother was scandalized by Lustiger’s views.) The Wanderer, too, itself criticized the
late John Cardinal O’Connor, and rightly so, for giving his blessing on national
television to a young man who was repudiating his Catholic faith for
Judaism. The Nightline anchor
asked: does this young man have the Cardinal’s blessing? His Eminence replied, “Oh yes. Oh yes. He doesn’t need it, but he has my
blessing, if we’re going to call it such, because I believe that’s what the
Church teaches…. Christ came into
the world as a Jew. Ethnically,
religiously, a Jew. We believe He
was the Son of God. But He came for
everybody.” Toward the end of the
program, the Cardinal added: “I would be keenly disappointed if there are
Christians, and most particularly Catholics, who watch this at Christmas time
and have animosity towards Stephen, towards what has happened. If they want to have animosity, I’d
rather they have it toward me…. If
they want to consider me wrong, that’s fine. But I think that he is happy in his
choice. I think that his mother is
peaceful in his choice and I think God is smiling on the whole thing.” We are to believe, then, that two of the
most important and influential cardinals in the world, not to mention two of the
Pope’s personal favorites, are radically at odds with the Holy See on this
matter? Say hello to the Mad Hatter
for me, Mr. Hand.
Much has already been
written on the Catholic-Lutheran Joint Statement on Justification that was
signed last year and has since been praised by the Pope on numerous
occasions. A good deal of this
criticism has found the text ambiguous (do things ever change?). Conservative Lutherans, for instance,
consider the document a lawyers’ agreement that can satisfy both sides without
really resolving anything. But
potentially even more significant in the long run is a statement buried within
the text: “Based on the consensus reached,” it reads, “continued dialogue is
required in order to full church communion, a unity in diversity in which
remaining differences would be reconciled and no longer have a divisive
force.” What in the world does that
mean? What “remaining differences”
would be “reconciled”? And what is
meant by “unity in diversity”? Are
we to understand that the restoration of “full communion” between the churches
would be characterized by a diversity of
belief?
Here is the interpretation of this typically opaque statement by Pro Ecclesia, a periodical whose
testimony is all the more significant because it styles itself as a
“conservative” magazine that expounds and defends the views of Pope John Paul
II: “Can there be church-dividing differences that are not, ipso facto, heresies
to be condemned? Certainly the
Joint Declaration shows how. The
mutual anathemas regarding the dogmatic expression of justification no longer
apply in a meaningful way. There is
consensus on the meaning and intention of the biblical teaching of justification
if not on its precise theological formulation. The paradigm of visible unity as the Church
being a communion of communions, one Church in a diversity of churches, is
sustained by the acceptance of historically developed differences as mutually
edifying diversity within a certain core of the one Church. We cannot mistake those cultural,
historical developments as irreformable truths.”
It is bad enough that the
agreement could even lend itself to such an interpretation, but is such an
interpretation really justified?
Unfortunately, it is. In
fact, reconciled diversity has been the paradigm for Lutheran-Catholic
reconciliation for some years now.
The pertinent document, signed by representatives of the Pontifical
Council for Promoting Christian Unity in 1984, is called “Facing Unity: Models,
Forms, and Phases of Catholic-Lutheran Church Fellowship,” and includes this
passage:
There have always been tendencies within the ecumenical movement that aimed at an ecumenical fellowship in which the existing ecclesial traditions with their particularity and diversity would remain in integrity and authenticity…. [T]he model of “unity in reconciled diversity” has recently been developed…. The idea of “unity in reconciled diversity” means that “expression would be given to the abiding value of the confessional forms of the Christian faith in all their variety” and that these diversities, “when related to the central message of salvation and Christian faith” and when they “ring out, [are] transformed and renewed” in the process of ecumenical encounter and theological dialogue; they “lose their divisive character and are reconciled to each other…into a binding ecumenical fellowship in which even the confessional elements” are preserved.
Such a statement almost
defies belief. An anonymous
seminary professor wrote about reconciled diversity in much greater depth in the
Summer 2000 issue of The Latin Mass
magazine. (It is quite telling that
advocates of “reconciled diversity” speak without repercussions even within the
Eternal City itself, whereas a seminary professor warning against it has to be
published anonymously—yet another reason I don’t envy Mr. Hand in his task of
defending this regime.)
“Reconciled diversity”
emerged in the pontificate of Paul VI.
In Paul’s January 23, 1969 speech he observed: “From theological
discussion it can emerge what the essential Christian doctrinal patrimony is,
how much of it is communicable authentically and together in different terms
that are substantially equal and complementary, and how it is possible for
everyone to make the final victorious discovery of that identity of faith, in
freedom, and in the variety of its expressions, from which union can be happily
celebrated.” If ecumenism were all
about ultimately bringing non-Catholics within the fold of the one true Church,
presumably it could have been described in a somewhat more lucid manner than
this.
Reconciled diversity simply will not go
away. Bishop Walter Kasper,
secretary of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity,
remarked in L’Osservatore Romano
earlier this year that prior to Vatican II the Church “understood the
re-establishing of Christian unity exclusively in terms of ‘return of our
separated brothers to the true Church of Christ…from which they have at one time
unhappily separated themselves.’”
This is no longer the Church’s position, he went on to explain. Kasper completely confirms what is noted
in Chris Ferrara’s survey of the post-conciliar novelties: ecumenism simply does
not seek the return of non-Catholics to the one true Church. As Kasper declared: “The old concept of
the ecumenism of return has today been replaced by that of a common journey
which directs Christians toward the goal of ecclesial communion understood as
unity in reconciled diversity” (emphasis mine here and throughout). The old idea of “ecumenism of return” is
“no longer applicable to the Catholic Church after Vatican II.” Ted Turner must be
overjoyed.
Even more bizarre and disturbing is Cardinal Ratzinger’s comment that
“the end of all ecumenical effort is to attain [?] the true unity of the
Church. For the moment, I wouldn’t
dare venture to suggest any concrete realization, possible or imaginable, of
this future Church. We are at an
intermediate stage of unity in diversity.”
Now note well: Pope John
Paul II appointed Cardinal Ratzinger as Prefect of the Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith. He also
appointed Bishop Kasper, whose orthodoxy was known to be in question, to his
current post just last year. Thus,
far from condemning the despicable capitulation called “reconciled diversity,”
John Paul appointed to his council on Christian unity one of its best-known
advocates, and Cardinal Ratzinger himself endorses the concept. Note also that Bishop Kasper made no
effort to argue, a la Mr. Hand, that the positions of Pius XI and John Paul II
are compatible. He frankly admitted
that Pius XI’s model no longer
applies. One of the heads of a
pontifical council, then, is apparently secure in his job despite—gasp—having pitted one Pope against another. It will be interesting, yet probably not
too suspenseful, to see which of us—me, a mere layman from Long Island, or
Bishop Kasper, the secretary of a pontifical council, whose views have
repercussions throughout the entire Church—Mr. Hand will see fit to excoriate
with his unique mixture of name-calling and hysteria. Surprise us for a change, Mr.
Hand.
The situation today is so
confused and chaotic that we have to go to Karl Rahner, not an authority to whom
I would ordinarily advert, for brutal honesty. “Either recognize the irreconcilability
of the different denominations,” he said in 1982, “or be content with a merely
verbal unity, or admit that the different denominations constitute a single
faith.”
“Fish or cut bait,” Karl
Keating told Chris Ferrara last month.
Well, unless the “conservatives” are prepared to embrace reconciled
diversity, it is they who must fish
or cut bait.
If I may be permitted a brief digression, in the midst of all of these
peculiar developments the wisdom and foresight of St. Pius X in condemning
Modernism with such vigor have been fully vindicated. St. Pius X included quite a number of
errors under this heading, but undergirding the whole heresy was a retreat from
the idea that God and the truth of Catholic religion were objectively
demonstrable. The Modernists tended
instead to focus on the subjective aspect of religion—feeling, emotion, and
sentiment—to the exclusion of all else.
Hence religious dogmas were not absolutely true statements of belief
presented for our assent by an infallible teaching authority but merely the
inchoate expression of an ineffable religious “sentiment” to be found within all
men. As St. Pius X correctly noted,
there is no place for religious error in such a calculus, for if religion is
based ultimately on subjectivity and sentiment, how can anyone ever be
wrong? How can we say that one
person’s sentiment is right and another’s simply mistaken? Much of the ecumenical movement in our
age, therefore, betrays very strong Modernist influences. In the Modernist schema religious dogma
is not absolute and irreformable but rather a vague, imprecise reflection of a
common religious “feeling” within the human race that is in a constant state of
evolution and flux, so it becomes difficult to imagine that religious
reconciliation could really be based on the static formula of the simple return
of dissidents to a single fold founded by Christ. Instead they imagine a shared spiritual
journey in which the religious sentiment common to the human race comes to its
full realization in some new dispensation that is the exclusive possession of no
single group.
If none of the above qualifies as “indifferentist ecumenism,” Mr. Hand,
what on earth does?
The subject of the 1986 World Day of Prayer for Peace in Assisi, in which
the Pope prayed alongside representatives of “the world’s great religions,” has
been the source of endless controversy.
In his welcoming remarks, Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, president of the
Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, remarked: “We are here together
without any trace of syncretism”—thus providing the “conservatives” with the
requisite fig leaf to explain away the whole episode. (If there is no trace of syncretism, why
say anything in the first place?)
He went on: “Each of the religions we profess has inner peace, and peace
among individuals and nations, as one of its aims. Each one pursues this aim in its own
distinctive and irreplaceable way.”
What precisely is “irreplaceable” about false religions? Hand calls us all kinds of names for
perceiving a kind of syncretism behind remarks such as these, and while some
traditionalists may have exaggerated the point—a defect from which we all know
Hand himself is happily immune—remarks like these should be a cause for concern because
they reveal how top churchmen are really thinking. It is not easy to understand how this
kind of statement could actually fail
to inspire alarm in an educated Catholic.
The Pontifical Council for
Interreligious Dialogue, in a document singled out for praise by Pope John Paul
II in his encyclical Ut Unum Sint
(1995), contains a similarly bizarre equivocation. Conversion, we are to understand, now
refers to “a general movement towards God [that] may refer to a change of
religious adherence, and particularly to embracing the Christian faith.” It may refer to a change of religious
adherence? What else may it refer
to, exactly? The deepening of one’s
faith in a false religion?
The Assisi event, in the
words of Cardinal Johannes Willebrands, then-president of the Secretariat for
Promoting Christian Unity, also “raised new hopes for the participation of
Catholics in similar initiatives organized by other Christians and their
churches.” (These remarks all
appear in the Vatican’s official book on the Assisi event, published in
1987.) At this stage I earnestly
implore Mr. Hand to examine his conscience and recall how many times he himself
has taken an active part “in similar initiatives organized by other Christians
and their churches.”
Notwithstanding his “monograph” I retain enough confidence in the good
sense of Mr. Hand to expect that the answer is zero. In standing aloof from the lived
practice of ecumenism, Hand does not realize that he himself is in a de facto state of
resistance to the ethos, nay the urging, of today’s Vatican. I can already hear Hand screaming that
praying with Protestants is not itself a dogmatic teaching, which of course it
isn’t, but it certainly is something
that Rome very much wants us to be doing.
Cardinal Cassidy, as reported in The Latin Mass magazine, is urging
Catholics and Lutherans to do as much as possible together without violating
their consciences. (In my case—and
as a former Lutheran myself—that translates into pretty much
nothing.)
Is Stephen Hand planning to attend any episcopal ordinations of our
“separated brethren” anytime soon?
Our bishops sure do, and none of them has been censured by the
Vatican. Faced with this sorry
spectacle, one is forced to wonder: do these bishops believe or do they not
believe that they alone, having been duly ordained by bishops in apostolic
succession from the first days of the Church, are in exclusive possession of the
authority and charism that belong to the episcopal office? If so, then what can their presence at
the flagrantly invalid ordination of a Protestant “bishop” possibly
signify? Is it just a gesture of
“good will”? In that case, I hope
everyone, as a gesture of good will, will attend next week’s ceremonies by which
I will be sworn in as President of the United States.
Is Hand planning any public
prayer sessions with prominent Anglicans who favor abortion and women’s
ordination? That’s how Rome opened
the Jubilee Year. Is a certain
Catholic apologist (whose initials are K.K.) going to remove from his website
all the articles intended to convert the Orthodox to Catholicism? In persisting in avoiding such
ecumenical encounters and persisting in the notion that all the Protestants
should simply convert to Catholicism and return to Rome, as was the universal
belief before we found out in 1993 that a whole bunch of people were suddenly
off-limits to proselytism, conservatives
like Hand and Keating are in a de facto state of resistance to the entire
ecumenical agenda, even as they attempt to defend it against all
criticism.
Especially disturbing about Assisi and related events is how clearly they
repudiate the insistent and tireless teaching of earlier twentieth-century popes
without ever explaining to the faithful where and why those Vicars of Christ had
been mistaken. Am I really no
longer allowed to be persuaded by their arguments? That seems like rather a peculiar demand
to make of the faithful, especially in the absence of any effort whatever to
point out the deficiencies in the Church’s previous posture. I can easily imagine a “conservative”
responding that the “signs of the times” call for this radical change; the Pope
himself noted that the “tension” existing in the world in 1986 demanded some
kind of pan-religious response. But
the pre-Conciliar popes, it should be remembered, lived through two world wars without
suggesting that a ceremony that could so much as be misinterpreted as implying any kind of
equivalence between the Catholic Church and other religious communions was at
all appropriate. Philadelphia
Archbishop Dennis Dougherty, to offer only one example, was acting as a fairly
typical American prelate when he refused
to take part in ecumenical ceremonies marking the end of World War I. The great Cardinal Mercier, moreover,
warned that World War I was a divine punishment visited upon mankind for having
placed the Catholic Church at the same level as false religions. There was no confusion about Catholic
identity in those days. These are
but two of an endless supply of anecdotes from another
world.
I freely confess: I am pitting one Pope against another. I admit it. But I am doing so not to convict anyone
of heresy. I am doing so because if
words still have meaning they obviously are different, and I defy Stephen Hand,
Al Matt, or anyone else to prove me wrong.
Back when the problem was nowhere near as serious as it is now, the
pre-conciliar popes were terrified by the spread of indifferentism. That tone has been completely replaced
by a baffling and inexplicable optimism.
In our age it would be difficult to think of an idea that is more
prevalent than the basic equality of all religions. Why would we want to do anything that
could even inadvertently lend credence to this view?
In the midst of all this, I
am also impertinent enough to ask what has happened to the teaching on Christ
the King and His role in society.
Has that been abandoned? If
so, why? What was wrong with Pope
Pius XI’s teaching in Quas Primas
(1925) apart from the fact that it greatly displeased the modern world? I want to know why Rome, having in its
official statements beaten a glaring retreat from the call for the enthronement
of Christ the King over human societies, has instead adopted almost exclusively
the language of tolerance and human rights. It cannot be a coincidence that in the
revised calendar the Feast of Christ the King has been moved to the end of the
liturgical year, a shift whose clear implication is that the Kingship of Christ
is something we await at the end of time and not anything to be established here
and now.
These kinds of scandalous and despicable equivocations are especially
inexcusable in the present spiritual milieu. There is nothing that a diehard
globalist would like more than to see all the Christian denominations, or indeed
all the world’s religions, absorbed into a blob that would in consequence be so
meaningless and so incapable of commanding the fierce loyalty of its adherents
that it would pose no threat whatever to the brave new world they are so eager
to impose on us. In this context it
is helpful and even a bit unsettling to recall what I consider one of the most
memorable lines of St. Pius X’s entire pontificate. We are witnessing, he said, a “great
movement of apostasy being organized in every country for the establishment of a
one-world Church which shall have neither dogmas, nor hierarchy; neither
discipline for the mind, nor curb for the passions….” I guess the situation has improved so
much since then that we are no longer in need of such
warnings.
By any conceivable interpretation of traditional Catholic teaching, it is
dramatically urgent that the members of the assembled non-Catholic religions at
Assisi convert to the true Faith, and as quickly as possible. Was this idea so much as hinted at by
any of the Catholics involved? Here
is how Pope Pius IX discussed this issue in his Allocution Singulari Quadem (1854), touching on a
point that would later appear in his Syllabus of Errors: “Not without sorrow
we have learned that another error, no less destructive, has taken possession of
some parts of the Catholic world, and has taken up 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.” Pius IX taught that the “invincible
ignorance” of those who had never known Christ would not be reckoned by God as a
sin. He also said, though, that “it
must be held by faith that outside the Apostolic Roman Church no one can be
saved; that this is the only ark of salvation; that he who shall not have
entered therein will perish in the flood….
Truths of this sort should be deeply fixed in the minds of the faithful,
lest they be corrupted by false doctrines, whose object is to foster an
indifference toward religion, which we see spreading widely and growing strong
for the destruction of souls.”
The traditional tone and
content of papal pronouncements on the one true religion is all gone. In Ut Unum Sint, John Paul wrote: “Along
the ecumenical path to unity, pride of place certainly belongs to common prayer, the prayerful union of
those who gather together around Christ himself. If Christians, despite their divisions,
can grow ever more united in common prayer around Christ, they will grow in the
awareness of how little divides them in comparison to what unites them.” Aside from the radically different tone
of such a statement from that of all pre-conciliar popes, who forbade precisely
such exercises as a danger to the faith of Catholics, the suggestion that more
unites Christians than divides them is extremely dubious, especially given the
catastrophic collapse of Protestantism into outright liberalism over the course
of the twentieth century. But even
taking into account the most conservative Protestants the question can be
raised: How can a faith that teaches us to strive for holiness and to purify our
souls through the sanctifying grace we receive from the sacraments be said to be
very similar to one that considers such things to be the foulest sins and the
grossest presumption?
Yet today the doctrine of
the one true Church, the Ark of Salvation, gives way to Cardinal Etchegaray’s bizarre
celebration of diversity—which, again, doubtless warmed the hearts of the
enemies of religion around the world, who are thrilled to see the seriousness
and the hard edge of the traditional faith visibly subsiding, but which at the
same time was as complete a repudiation of the efforts and instincts of the
whole assembly of saints as I hope we ever have the misfortune to
see.
Surveying the state of
Christian and pan-religious ecumenism, Romano Amerio, a peritus at Vatican II,
had this to say:
The present temper of
ecumenism, involving an effective renunciation of an expansion of the Catholic
faith, is clearly evident in John Paul II’s speeches in Nigeria in 1982: there
is no mention of conversion to Christ, but in a special message to Muslims,
which was not actually received by any Muslims or in any way replied to, the
Pope hoped for cooperation between the two religions “in the interests of
Nigerian unity” and “to make a contribution to the good order of the world as a
new civilization of love.” As we
have noted, harmony in the world is no longer presented in terms of a single
religion, but of a single civilization….
Let us here recall an
important teaching of Pope St. Pius X.
In August 1910 the Pope issued his apostolic letter Our Apostolic Mandate, directed at the
French Sillon. The Sillon was a
social and political organization that sought to base civilization and civic
progress exclusively upon human good will and to leave out of the equation those
things, religion especially, that divide people. The Pope quoted one of its adherents
thus: “Catholic comrades will work between themselves in a special organization
and will learn and educate themselves.
Protestant and Free-Thinking Democrats will do likewise on their own
side. But all of us, Catholics,
Protestants and Free-Thinkers will have at heart to arm young people, not in
view of the fratricidal struggle, but in view of a disinterested emulation in
the field of social and civic virtues.”
The Pope
answered:
Here we have, founded by
Catholics, an interdenominational association that is to work for the reform of
civilization, an undertaking which is above all religious in character, for
there is no true civilization without a moral civilization, and no true moral
civilization without the true religion: it is a proven truth, a historical
fact. The new Sillonists cannot
pretend that they are merely working on “the ground of practical realities”
where differences of belief do not matter…. But stranger still, alarming and
saddening at the same time, are the audacity and frivolity of men who call
themselves Catholics and dream of re-shaping society under such conditions, and
of establishing on earth, over and beyond the pale of the Catholic Church, “the
reign of love and justice” with workers coming from everywhere, of all religions
and of no religion, with or without beliefs so long as they forego what might
divide them—their religious and philosophical convictions—and so long as they
share what unites them—a “generous idealism and moral forces drawn from whence
they can.” When we consider the
forces, knowledge and supernatural virtues which were necessary to establish the
Christian State, and the sufferings of millions of martyrs, and the light given
by the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, and of the
self-sacrifice of all the heroes of charity, and a powerful hierarchy ordained
in heaven, and the streams of Divine Grace—the whole having been built up, bound
together, and impregnated by the life and spirit of Jesus Christ, the Wisdom of
God, the Word made man—when we think, I say, of all this, it is frightening to
behold new apostles eagerly attempting to do better by a common interchange of
vague idealism and civic virtues.
What are they going to produce?
What is to come out of this collaboration? A mere verbal and chimerical
construction in which we see, glowing in a jumble, and in seductive confusion,
the words of Liberty, Justice, Fraternity, Love, Equality, and human exaltation,
all resting upon an ill-understood human dignity. It will be a tumultuous agitation,
sterile for the end proposed, but which will benefit the less Utopian exploiters
of the people. Yes, we can truly
say that the Sillon, its eyes fixed on a chimera, brings Socialism in its
train.
The “Final Declaration of
the Inter-religious Assembly” of October 1999, the Vatican gathering that
commemorated the Assisi event of October 1986, called on the world’s religions
to “confront together, responsibly and courageously, the problems and challenges
of our modern world (i.e., poverty, racism, environmental pollution,
materialism, war, proliferation of arms, globalization, AIDS, lack of medical
care, breakdown of family and community, marginalization of women and children,
etc.).” How is this program
different from the utopianism condemned by St. Pius X? But here I go again pitting one Pope
against another, a habit I picked up after committing myself irrevocably to the
Law of the Excluded Middle, that elementary principle of logic to which we
“Integrists” continue to have such stubborn recourse.
The world in which we find ourselves is one that, whether it realizes it
or not, needs a tough and militant Catholic Church more than ever. Indeed it was precisely the militancy of
the Catholic Church, and the grace that her sacraments transmit, that gave the
saints the strength and fortitude to live lives of truly heroic virtue. It wasn’t a conception of the Church as
a “joint custodian” of the Church of God with this or that other church that
encouraged the saints in their heroism; the Catholic Church was the Church of God! It was this conviction that set on fire
the souls of the nuns whose heroism in the Catholic hospitals of the eighteenth
century amazed even the freethinking Voltaire, who loathed the Catholic Church
but who admired and could not explain the seemingly superhuman strength of these
great women. It was this conviction
alone that can account for the great St. Isaac Jogues, a Jesuit missionary who
was so horribly mutilated by the Indians in North America that he was not
recognized when he returned to Rome, but who nevertheless returned to mission
territory two years later, where he met his martyrdom.
The novelties and
innovations in the post-Conciliar years, ecumenism chief among them, are not
irreversible. They constitute a
prudential program that in the name of the Church’s welfare we have the right
and duty to oppose. Let us recall
the words of the Dominican theologian Melchior Cano, an important figure at the
Council of Trent, which could have been written for the Stephen Hands of the
post-conciliar era: “Peter has no need of our lies or flattery. Those who blindly and indiscriminately
defend every decision of the supreme Pontiff are the very ones who do most to
undermine the authority of the Holy See—they destroy instead of strengthening
its foundations.”
The Catholic Church (and not
the Union, as Abraham Lincoln foolishly suggested) is truly the last, best hope
of earth, and I’m not talking about fighting racism or curing AIDS. I mean that only the Church, with her
sacraments and her beautiful rituals and traditions, can sustain us in holiness
in a world in which temptation is aggressively and ubiquitously present. The traditional faith alone can restore
a sense of piety, reverence, and humility to a world that is making war on the
very idea of the sacred, refusing in its hubris to acknowledge that there might
exist any belief, institution, or code of conduct not subject to human
revision. The Catholic Church,
wrote the American Ecclesiastical
Review in 1899, is “the greatest, the grandest, and the most beautiful
institution in the world.” And so
she is.
We just wish her leaders
would start acting like it once again.
In his ongoing (and
ever-reactionary) response to my last Remnant article, Mr. Hand thinks he
dealt me a terrible blow in ridiculing my description of Vatican II as
constituting primarily a change in the Church’s orientation. But for Heaven’s
sake, what other shorthand way exists for describing it? For the most part, that is precisely
what the Council was about: a change in the Church’s orientation vis-à-vis her relations with
the world, with non-Catholic Christians, with non-Christians, and even with
atheists; in the kind of language she would use, in her increasing distaste for
ecclesiastical discipline—the list could go on. I am quite aware that the Council
included documents on such questions as the sources of divine revelation and
Rome’s relationship with the Eastern Catholic churches. But it is inane to pounce on my
characterization of the changes instituted by Vatican II as having dealt
primarily with the Church’s orientation.
That is how everyone, friend or foe, describes it, since that is
obviously what it was. Hand’s petty
refusal to concede this is a function of his inability to make simple
distinctions. He apparently thinks
the ecumenical initiative now has the force of magisterial infallibility behind
it, as if the desirability of praying with people of other faiths were a truth
on par with the Blessed Virgin’s Immaculate Conception. That’s why he scornfully dismissed as a
“hallucination” my suggestion that someday these things might be reversed. My advice to Mr. Hand: quit being an
integrist, raising non-magisterial matters to the level of infallible
teaching.
I cited St. Isidore of
Seville as having believed that the Church would have been better off had the
Second Council of Constantinople (553) never been called. I am supposed to be impressed,
presumably, with Hand’s reply that this is an example of the hyperbole that
follows immediately upon the conclusion of any council. I invite Hand to take the trouble to
study this council and decide for himself whether it wasn’t in fact quite
responsible for the confusion and bitterness that ravaged the Church for over a
century following its close. (The
great Catholic historian Msgr. Philip Hughes was being diplomatic when he
described it, in the 1930s, as “the strangest of all the general
councils.”) And second, since St.
Isidore died some eighty-three years after the close of Constantinople II, I’d
say he had ample time for reflection.
I’ve since deleted this
particular tract of his, so I’m responding to Hand’s objections from
memory. I remember vividly, though,
that more than once he poked fun at me for my age, once again revealing the
hypocrisy of his solemn protestations against alleged ad hominem attacks on our part. My arguments for traditionalism, he
says, are a product of the zeal of youth.
Now before this attack I would never have dreamed of suggesting that
Hand’s own defense of business as usual in Rome could be traced to the lethargy
of middle age. But since he brought
it up….