Inside Baseball

We’re back on the train

There is a new Amoris laetitia controversy.

Apparently, the Argentine bishops—or some Argentine bishops—issued a secret-ish protocol implementing Chapter 8 of Amoris laetitia. It says what Amoris laetitia says: under some circumstances bigamists may receive communion without committing to live as brother and sister. While stunning, in a sense, to hear bishops of the Church saying something like this, it is not especially surprising after the last couple of years. This is “Amoris laetitia 101.” Then a private letter from the Holy Father to one of the Argentine bishops was leaked, praising the document generally and saying that it represented the correct understanding of Amoris laetitia. After some back and forth about whether the Holy Father’s letter was genuine, it seems that Vatican Radio has referred to it as the real deal. There has been some critical coverage of these events.

We’re left wondering: what’s the big deal? Let us be realistic for a moment. It has been manifest for a couple of years—and explicit since Amoris laetitia was released—that the Holy Father wants pastors to admit bigamists to communion without their first committing to live as brother and sister. Now, we recognize that Chapter 8 did not propose any juridical norms; thus, one may say that, notwithstanding what the Holy Father wants, he has not actually done anything. The law before Amoris laetitia is the same as the law after Amoris laetitia. No big deal. But the ship sailed on that argument some time ago. Now, it may be an interesting question why the Holy Father has not done something explicitly that he seems to want to do very badly. (As a friend of ours has suggested privately, perhaps the Holy Spirit has protected him from formally teaching error.) But the fact remains that he wants to do this and seems willing to let it happen on a wink-and-nod basis. And maybe this recent round of the Amoris laetitia wars is a big deal with that in mind.

Now, perhaps the big deal is the fact that the footnotes are the strongest basis for the Argentine bishops’ action. Paragraphs 5 and 6 of the protocol apparently make use of the notes in Amoris laetitia for key propositions. The citations include, you guessed it, the infamous Footnote 351, which has been criticized cogently by Robert Spaemann, among many, many others. As a clever friend of ours said on Twitter in the past couple of days, all the people who talked about the time bombs in the footnotes were correct; the Argentine bishops show that the footnotes, far from being the least important parts of Amoris laetitia, are among the most important parts. The suggestion that the Pope doesn’t use footnotes to make important pronouncements about doctrine or praxis is ridiculous now. (Perhaps it always was.) At any rate, it should suffice to answer anyone who claims that the pope doesn’t use footnotes in a doctrinally serious manner to say that the Argentine bishops—whose interpretation has been praised and endorsed privately by the Holy Father—sure think he does. The burden has shifted to the defenders, we think.

And perhaps the big deal is that the Argentine bishops’ protocol also cites a 1996 letter from John Paul II to William Cardinal Baum, then the major penitentiary. (There is a translation available from EWTN of this letter, but not from the Vatican.) This document was cited in Footnote 364 of Amoris laetitia, though we have not seen it heavily discussed. (Not least since Footnote 364 contains some of the Holy Father’s characteristic polemic about particularly rigid priests. You might be excused for missing the citation to a not-hugely-well-known bit of papal moral theology.) We wonder, however, if the protocol represents a new line of attack by the defenders of Amoris laetitia. The relevant passage from St. John Paul’s letter to Cardinal Baum is this:

It is also self-evident that the accusation of sins must include the serious intention not to commit them again in the future. If this disposition of soul is lacking, there really is no repentance: this is in fact a question of moral evil as such, and so not taking a stance opposed to a possible moral evil would mean not detesting evil, not repenting. But as this must stem above all from sorrow for having offended God, so the intention of not sinning must be based on divine grace, which the Lord never fails to give anyone who does what he can to act honestly.

If we wished to rely only on our own strength, or primarily on our own strength, the decision to sin no more, with a presumed self-sufficiency, almost a Christian Stoicism or revived Pelagianism, we would offend against that truth about man with which we began, as though we were to tell the Lord, more or less consciously, that we did not need him. It should also be remembered that the existence of sincere repentance is one thing, the judgement of the intellect concerning the future is another: it is indeed possible that, despite the sincere intention of sinning no more, past experience and the awareness of human weakness makes one afraid of falling again; but this does not compromise the authenticity of the intention, when that fear is joined to the will, supported by prayer, of doing what is possible to avoid sin.

(Emphasis supplied.) Obviously the argument goes something like this: John is living in a second marriage with Jane. A holy priest has explained to John and Jane that their marriage is adulterous, whatever else might be said for it, but John cannot divorce Jane because they’re raising their child, James. With us so far? John and Jane resolve to live as brother and sister and are, accordingly, absolved sacramentally and admitted to Holy Communion. But John and Jane slip up. Now, the Amoris laetitia casuist might say that, if John and Jane are sincerely repentant in the confessional for the slip up, and if they sincerely resolve to resume living as brother and sister—even though they are aware from past experience and the awareness of their weakness, that they may well slip up again—they have the firm purpose of amendment required for a good confession. Problem solved! Perhaps so, but it is remarkably easy to start waving one’s hands at the requirements of this theory and arrive at the place where the possibility of the future slip up vitiates the requirement to resolve to live as brother and sister. One can hear a pliable priest saying, “Listen, you know you’re going to slip up again, why let yourself down? The important thing is that you’re sorry now.”

As we say, we have heard far more about Footnote 351 than Footnote 364. It will be interesting to see if the argument from Footnote 364 gets a little more currency. Currently, the Amoris laetitia defenders say, essentially, that the gravity of the sin of bigamy is reduced by concrete circumstances. That’s Rocco Buttiglione’s argument, at any rate: the bigamists don’t freely consent because of these circumstances making it impossible to break off the adulterous relationship, thus what would be a mortal sin is really a venial sin. But the Argentine bishops’ line of attack is altogether more dangerous. Of course it’s a mortal sin, our casuist says. Of course! No question about it. Familiaris consortio could not be clearer. One wishes that the whole of FC 84 had made its way into Amoris laetitia. Bigamists have to live as brother and sister if they want to receive Holy Communion. Beyond a doubt this is so! St. John Paul restated the apostolic teaching of the Church, as part of his towering contribution to moral theology. But, the same St. John Paul said that a firm purpose of amendment needn’t be such a gloomy, totalizing, all-encompassing thing. The fact that you might slip up—you probably will slip up, if you’re being honest with yourself, and sooner rather than later—in the future doesn’t vitiate your repentance in the hic et nunc. You just have to try to do better. Just try. But don’t beat yourself up over it. Everybody goofs up!

Of course, those with ears to hear know exactly what all that means.

I’ll tip my hat to the new constitution

Francis X. Rocca has a long piece at the Wall Street Journal about Cardinal Pell and his Secretariat for the Economy, recognizing what we’ve been saying for a while: the Pope’s financial reforms have not been going well. But Rocca provides some of the background to the Pope’s gradual withdrawal of authority from Cardinal Pell and the Secretariat, following some lightning reforms early in his pontificate:

In a series of moves over about 18 months, Francis stripped Cardinal Pell of control over APSA’s real-estate holdings. He declined to approve his recommendations to reorganize the management of the financial portfolio. He wrote and made public a pointed letter making clear that all hiring and transfer of personnel required the approval of the office of Cardinal Parolin. The audit was scrapped, and in July, he took away most of the management functions—for payroll, payment and procurement services—and restored them to APSA.

“When a new administrative body is created, it always takes a while until it fits into the broader organization,” said Vatican spokesman Greg Burke. “We shouldn’t be distracted by the noise.”

(Emphasis supplied.) Part of this is the usual clamor about Cardinal Pell, who is seen as a conservative. Robert Mickens, formerly of The Tablet (as some of our readers may recall), and Andrea Tornielli are quoted for context. Big surprise.

But Rocca provides some interesting information:

The real-estate move and plans for the investments raised hackles at APSA and other offices.

APSA’s president, Cardinal Domenico Calcagno, has developed a strong relationship with Francis, who over time has become more connected to insiders at the Vatican. The two frequently eat together in the dining hall at the Vatican guesthouse, where the pope lives.

Cardinal Calcagno declined to comment on Cardinal Pell’s remarks about APSA, saying only that he was “disconcerted” by the statements.

The Secretary of State also controlled extensive investments, and the powers of Cardinal Parolin over hiring and spending were under threat.

Then the pope started paring Cardinal Pell’s powers.

(Emphasis supplied.) Read the whole thing there.

 

Vietnam and Christian intellectuals

A while back we commented on Alan Jacobs’s piece decrying the absence of Christian intellectuals in American public discourse. You may recall that Jacobs’s discussed Fr. Richard John Neuhaus and Neuhaus’s magazine, First Things, at some length in his essay. R.R. Reno, the current editor of First Things, has commented himself on Jacobs’s essay, and he makes a couple of interesting points. First, he brings out in greater detail something we merely alluded to:

There’s something to this analysis, but I’d add another factor, unmentioned by Jacobs. The biggest shift in American religious culture in my lifetime has been the extraordinary decline of mainline Protestantism as a vital force in public life. The mainline Protestant tradition had inherited the establishmentarian mentality of New England Puritanism, along with Puritanism’s urgent moralism. As a consequence, the leaders of mainline Protestantism saw themselves as the “conscience of the nation.” In mid-twentieth-century America, as men of letters, social reformers, and political rhetoricians were transformed into “intellectuals” (itself a fascinating story), mainline Protestants came to play that role as well, and did so in theological as well as sociological and philosophical terms.

(Emphasis supplied.) He goes on to say:

The decline of mainline Protestantism was part of a larger dissolution of centrist American institutions. Universities today are far less likely to produce intellectuals. The reason for this failure is not just specialization (although that is a factor) but ideological homogeneity. To a degree that I could not foresee when I was a college student nearly forty years ago, the world of ideas has become almost entirely colonized by the political urgencies of the moment.

(Emphasis supplied.) As Matthew Sitman has noted, Jacobs is only really interested in the output of liberal protestant intellectuals from about 1945 to 1970. Of the examples Jacobs cites, Auden lived the longest, and he died in 1973. And, while we are not a sociologist of American religion, this seems to jive with Reno’s point. We certainly have the impression that mainline protestantism fell off a cliff in the late 1960s or early 1970s. Certainly we have a hard time recalling any time since then that mainline protestants have been a force to be reckoned with.

We also wonder, perhaps with a comic-book understanding of American history, whether a broader trend of antiestablishment sentiment should be considered when examining this phenomenon. Reno makes the point that liberal protestants had a strong investment in the American establishment, going back, no doubt, to colonial times. But by the end of the 1960s, the establishment was not looking so hot. If you draw bright brackets around 1945 and 1970, you include an active phase of the civil rights struggle and most of the United States’ escalation in the Vietnam War. Indeed, we wonder whether the Vietnam War didn’t have much to do with the rise of antiestablishment sentiment in the United States. For example, Operation Rolling Thunder commenced on March 2, 1965 and Operation Arc Light sometime before the middle of 1965. The Tet Offensive began at the end of January 1968. The 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago turned into a general melee as a result of clashes between protesters and Mayor Richard Daley’s police. And more generally at about this time, radical leftist factions—especially student groups—were involved in high profile actions. Obviously, we don’t mean to set up a montage of late-1960s strife set to the strains of “Fortunate Son,” but we think it is worth considering that at about the same time Christian intellectuals—and, indeed, mainline protestantism—are disappearing, antiestablishment sentiment in the United States is reaching a fever pitch over the Vietnam War.

However, if there is a relationship between the rise of antiestablishment sentiment caused by the Vietnam War and the decline of protestant intellectuals, it is a complicated one. But perhaps there’s a link. Jacobs mentioned Fr. Neuhaus as a Lutheran, active in the civil rights movement and in opposing the Vietnam War. Reno observes:

Richard John Neuhaus was a good example. Although formed in the more isolated atmosphere of Missouri Synod Lutheranism, Neuhaus came of age politically and intellectually as a participant in mainline Protestant–dominated organizations supporting civil rights and then opposing the Vietnam War. He possessed an inborn confidence, but that confidence was reinforced by the mainline Protestant sense of ownership over the moral future of America.

(Emphasis supplied.) Perhaps it was the failure of these organizations to, well, do anything to stop the war that drove their decline. While the civil rights movement resulted in actual achievements, such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the antiwar movement did not produce many (any?) similar achievements. Again, we do not want to suggest that Vietnam was the defining moment for American mainline protestants and their intellectual vanguard; however, it is difficult to maintain a sense of ownership over a country’s moral future when the country manifestly does not listen to you. To put it another way, it is passing hard “to transcend the ideological conflicts of the moment in order to speak to the nation as a whole” when the nation clearly isn’t listening.

Or maybe not. It’s an interesting question, and it would be fascinating to see an author explore the question at length.

Reno makes another point, very self-aware, and we wanted to mention it, too:

By the time Neuhaus founded First Things, it was already obvious that mainline Protestantism was finished. It had become a chaplaincy for the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. Neuhaus thought Evangelical and Catholic intellectuals could fill the void, providing America with a religiously informed public philosophy suited to our times. (I’m so thoroughly catechized by the First Things project that those words flow out of me effortlessly.) As Jacobs laments, however, this vision has not come to pass. I don’t want to put words in his mouth, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Alan were to say that folks like me have become a chaplaincy for the conservative wing of the Republican Party.

(Emphasis supplied.) We might, in an uncharitable moment, be inclined to agree that, in many ways, the First Things project has been largely Catholics, evangelicals, and others united to give the Republican Party some intellectual cover. But First Things is not alone, nor is it the worst offender. Groups like the Acton Institute seem altogether more interested in providing a theological and philosophical framework for conventional Republican ideology than First Things. And the shifting landscape of the Republican Party seems apt to draw First Things out of a cozy relationship. By this, of course, we mean: Donald Trump is mixing up the established order. Reno himself was a major contributor to National Review‘s Against Trump issue, for example. And we have heard reports that some Trump supporters have been highly critical of First Things for what they perceive as regular anti-Trump coverage.

Something else to think about, at any rate.

You must pay for everything in this world

Father John Hunwicke, continuing a series on his blog, has an interesting post about the magisterium and the rights of the faithful, clergy and laity alike. Indeed he discusses the recent, private letter of forty-five eminent Catholic thinkers to the College of Cardinals, asking them to encourage the Holy Father to condemn some erroneous interpretations of Amoris laetitia.

Not long ago, as is well known, a group of 45 scholars, teachers, and pastors, wrote a Letter. (I emphasise that these people came from a wide variety of countries throughout the world: I emphasise this because I do not want what I am about to say to be narrowly construed as a criticism of any members of the English Church.) The Letter was addressed to each member of the Sacred College of Cardinals respectfully asking them to beg the Holy Father graciously to consider the clarification of certain parts of Amoris laetitia which have proved to be dangerously ambiguous. Cardinals, I think, count as Sacred Shepherds. This was a private letter (although its contents have unfortunately become public). Even if it had been a public letter, I do not see how it could have failed to enjoy the protection of Canon 212.

Dr Javier Hervada, sometime Professor of Canon Law at Navarra, comments on Canon 212: “The right of free speech and public opinion within the Church is acknowledged. Science, skill, and prestige are required to exercise the right justly or to give the corresponding moral obligation greater or less force. The basis of this right does not reside in these prerequisites but in the condition of being one of the faithful“.

(Emphasis in original.) As you may recall, the signatories of this letter were identified in one or the other of the progressive house organs. Then the letter itself was leaked. This is, we suspect very much, not what the drafters and signatories wanted. The letter was written in very frank terms, but always respectful, always keenly aware of its place. It was a private letter from concerned Catholics to the close collaborators of the Supreme Pontiff. But if there is one thing that the progressives in the Church have learned, it’s that leaks are good for business. Digressing slightly, it’s interesting that the leaks only go one way. One almost never hears that some damaging leak has occurred of a progressive’s papers. And when one does hear it, the leaker is blasted into oblivion and punished brutally, because there’s nothing worse than leaks.

Except when they’re judiciously used against someone unpopular.

And it seems that this leak has been used against unpopular squeaky wheels. Father Hunwicke again:

In the fourth year of this current pontificate, it is appropriate also to mention the insistently repeated calls of the Holy Father Pope Francis himself for Parrhesia [bold and free speaking] in the Church.

With regard to the paragraph which now follows below, I would like to make it very clear that I am not talking about myself or in any way describing or alluding to my own situation or any experience I have had.

Intimidation and cruel pressures have, it appears, been applied to persuade some of the signatories to the Letter to rescind their signatures. 

Perhaps this may remind English readers of the occasion when, a couple of years ago, some 450 English clerics wrote an open letter with regard to the agenda of the Synod of Bishops, and it was reported in the public papers that intimidation had been applied to dissuade priests from signing. How those guilty of such worldly intimidation can think that their behaviour helps any cause in which they sincerely and Christianly believe, I simply do not even begin to understand. It all seems to me so much more like the actions of playground bullies than any conduct which could be appropriate between those whom the Lord called His Friends (philous; John 15:15).

(Emphasis in original.) We are sorry to say that we’ve heard very similar reports—and from sources we trust implicitly. Upshot: the leaks worked. The Catholics who had the temerity to ask the cardinals to ask the Pope to clear up some of the confusion surrounding Amoris laetitia have been identified and will be dealt with in due course. Never mind that they’ve got the right—and, indeed, the duty in some cases—of expressing their concerns to their pastors and their pastors’ close collaborators. Only a doctor of the law would care about canon 212. They better get in line, but quick. 

This is, of course, just what traditionally minded Catholics have always known. Progressives in the Church operate this way. It is what we saw at the Council and after. We must talk about things—openly, freely, frankly. The schemata are bad. They’re shot through with neo-scholasticism, unecumenical language, and stuffy dogmas. We’ve got to talk about this. And when they get the answer they want, that’s it. No more discussion. Next question! We are witnessing the early stages of the same phenomenon with the business about deaconesses. We’ve got to talk about this. But just wait until they get the answer they clearly want.

Another “mega-dicastery” established, this time for “integral human development”

Today, the Holy Father issued his Apostolic Letter motu proprio data Humanam progressionem, establishing another so-called mega-dicastery, the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, by merging the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, the the Pontifical Council Cor Unum, the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People, and the Pontifical Council for Health Care Workers, effective on January 1, 2017. The Holy Father also approved ad experimentum the statutes of the new Dicastery, and, while there is a link on the Vatican website to those statutes, the link goes nowhere. We observe that Humanam progressionem has happily been issued in the full range of modern languages, opposed to Latin and Italian only.

Rorate Caeli reports that this dicastery has long been expected, and there were reports that it would be called the Congregation for Charity and Justice, not the unpleasant, ungainly name it did receive, “Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development.” Rorate also reports that Peter Cardinal Turkson, long known for an interest in matters of economics and development, has been tipped as the head of the Dicastery. Finally, Rorate reports that the section of the Dicastery responsible for refugees and migrants will be under the immediate direction of the Holy Father. (One assumes that this will be treated in the statutes approved today ad experimentum of the Dicastery when they are finally available.)

At this point, one wonders—we wonder, at any rate—whether the consolidation of dicasteries is going to be the extent of the Holy Father’s much vaunted reform of the Curia. He was elected, if you’ll recall, amid a broad consensus of the cardinals that something had to be done about the Curia. Indeed, his Council of Cardinals was constituted largely to address revisions to Pastor Bonus and reform of the Curia. There were some lightning moves, such as the establishment of the Council for the Economy under Reinhard Cardinal Marx and the Secretariat for the Economy under George Cardinal Pell, but those moves seem to have collapsed for the most part, with, for example, the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See retaking most of the competencies it had lost in 2014. It would be interesting to know what the internal view of these things is.

Shea, Fisher, politics, and the Catholic Media

We note at the outset that we did not follow either Mark Shea or Simcha Fisher all that closely. This will surprise no one, but we probably were not the target audience or the ideal reader for either of them. However, from time to time, something they wrote at the National Catholic Register (or elsewhere) would bubble into our sphere. Sometimes we agreed, sometimes we disagreed, but never especially vehemently and never often. The fact of the matter is that neither of them wrote regularly on topics in which we ourselves were interested. Over the last few days, it appears that the National Catholic Register (or its parent company, EWTN) has fired both Shea and Fisher. This has provoked a lot of reaction, both cheering the firings and lamenting them. It seems to us that the firings, which may or may not have been just considered on their own terms, say something important about the state of American Catholic media.

Shea’s firing was very strange. The Register, in a statement issued concerning the firing, stated that Shea never violated their editorial standards. However, it appears that statements he made on other websites were sufficient to cause them to terminate his employment. (It does not appear that Shea broke those other websites’ rules.) In other words, the Register admits that Shea’s work for them was at least minimally satisfactory. Strange, then, that he would be let go. Fisher’s firing was stranger still, since it remains hugely unclear to us what she was let go for. Some people have suggested that it was due to some vulgar language in a political context, others that she expressed too much support for Shea. It seems that one explanation that has been given is that Shea and Fisher can be pointed in different ways in their interactions on Facebook, but that hardly seems like a justification for firing someone, not least since a platform like Facebook encourages pointed interactions.

And we have spoken with some folks who have had less than charming interactions with Mark Shea in particular, and they believe that he could be very pointed and very dismissive of his opponents. Though we have yet to see a debate on matters of faith conducted on the internet that does not involve someone being very pointed and very dismissive of one’s opponents. Perhaps Shea exceeded the limits imposed by charity, perhaps he didn’t. That’s a matter for him and his confessor. We mention it only to say that sharp elbows seem to be a known hazard among those of us who discuss these matters on the internet. One may celebrate Shea getting at long last his comeuppance, but one shouldn’t whistle past the graveyard quite so cheerfully. We wouldn’t want to be judged on our worst interactions. Likewise, people feel that Fisher could be pointed. However, it seems to us that Fisher does not quite have the same reputation for nastiness that Shea does.

It is also, we will say only briefly, something else to see traditionally minded Catholics, who have been tone-policed and concern-trolled, to say the least, by everyone from high prelates in the Church on down at various times, engaging in exactly the same sort of behavior that was intolerable when applied to them. Error has no rights, it is true, but let us be humane about these things, even if our opponents are not.

At any rate, we have seen some gloating among traditionally minded Catholics, many of whom never had a lot of use for EWTN or the National Catholic Register to begin with, over Shea and Fisher’s firings. The thrust of it is that Shea and Fisher weren’t traditionally minded Catholics and maybe even weren’t all that conservative, and, thus, they deserved what they got. Some folks might even be able to point to specific issues on which Shea and Fisher were insufficiently orthodox or whatever, but even that may presuppose a traditional mindset. (Certainly, we have questions about NFP as it is currently understood popularly, to take one example at semi-random, but we strive to avoid discussing the matter at any length for a variety of reasons.) But it is unclear to us that EWTN or the Register is especially known for the sort of precise, clear-eyed orthodoxy that other outlets are. They seem to be, instead, the voice of a center-right, middle-of-the-road American Catholicism.

This seems to us to be the crucial problem. It seems to us that Shea and Fisher were not heterodox in a relevant way (at least from the corporation’s perspective), so much as they were inconvenient to the specific coalition that EWTN and the Register serve. A traditionally minded Catholic might call the coalition “neo-Caths on the American political right.” (The Reporter is, of course, their left counterpart. More on that in a second.) This is, of course, insider jargon, but what it means is, essentially, a Catholic for whom the doctrine of the Church begins and ends with the Catechism of the Catholic Church and the platform of the Republican Party. Shea and Fisher often pitched to the left, speaking in American political terms, of this alliance, though I don’t think either of them is a leftist in conventional terms. Shea perhaps is more explicitly to the left, insofar as part of his project was rejecting the implication that Catholics have to be on the American political right. But, notwithstanding their precise personal categorization, neither of them spends a lot of time making nice with Catholics on the American political right.  And that seems to be a big part of the problem for us with the Shea and Fisher situation. Perhaps Shea is uncharitable in online interactions; perhaps Fisher uses vulgar language when she oughtn’t; but both of those things seem to be convenient pretexts for the Register getting rid of some contributors who don’t fit in with the broader political tendencies of the Register‘s constituency.

Just as EWTN and the Register is the house organ of the neo-Cath/GOP coalition, so too is the Reporter the house organ of Catholics on the American political left. And both sides have essentially guaranteed that their readers will never be challenged by a contrary view. Name one politically conservative writer for the Reporter. Try to name one politically liberal, or relatively politically liberal, writer for the Register (after Shea and Fisher got canned). There is, then, no contradiction to either publication’s contention that they represent the correct expression of Catholicism in the United States, which involves fusion with one or the other major political party, when anyone with eyes to see can identify the serious problems with either. Moreover, the ideological purification of the publications only furthers this toxic, erroneous notion that Catholics ought to engage wholeheartedly with the categories of the American political spectrum.

We have said and said, both here and elsewhere, that the alliance between Catholics and the American political right, forged largely on the basis of the Republican Party’s laudable opposition to legalized infanticide, is one of the most damaging relationships that the Church has entered. It seemingly locks Catholics into a set of policies that in many ways deviate seriously from the traditional teaching of the Church, especially on issues central to the Church’s social teaching. Consider Republican nominee Donald J. Trump’s immigration platform. Are a border wall and aggressive background investigations for some immigrants consistent with the natural right of migration that Pius XII articulated in his radio address on the 50th anniversary of Rerum novarum or in his Apostolic Constitution Exsul Familia Nazarethana? (We leave it to you to decide, though we suspect you know what we think.) And other issues could be mentioned, if you think immigration too hot button an issue. A Catholic who wants to be a good Republican is, therefore, in a bind. And Shea and Fisher, each in their way, did little to make that situation more comfortable for those Catholics.

We note in passing that Catholics who want to be good Democrats have been in a very serious bind for a very long time, and we will not rehearse all the problems with that approach, since they are all too obvious and all too well known. We don’t want to minimize this difficult, but we don’t want to bore you (or ourselves) by repeating the all the allegations of the libellus. Suffice it to say that no Catholic can wholeheartedly support—or, indeed, even support in the slightest way without the gravest reservations and for a grave cause—a political party that makes a “right” to infanticide and contraception a cornerstone of its platform.

Indeed, it goes beyond mere discomfort: Trump is causing strain within this traditional coalition. George Weigel and Robert George came out strong against Trump in March, when the Trump candidacy was still a contingent thing. (We probably criticized it here then, as little more than an objection that Trump was outside the neo-Cath/GOP consensus, which still seems a just critique to us.) And even sources that aren’t hugely in touch with Catholic thought realize, especially in the light of Steve Bannon’s comments, among other things, that Trump has a hard time connecting with Catholics. In other words, not only is the dual loyalty of this neo-Cath/GOP coalition a difficulty philosophically, but also the concrete problem of Donald Trump is a tremendous difficulty. A Catholic who wants to be a good Republican is in a very serious bind in the age of Donald Trump.

Catholics—at least Catholics who are serious about the Church’s teachings—know that all this is exactly backwards. The American political spectrum ought to engage wholeheartedly with the teachings of the Church. Catholics should not run to figure out how they can combine their political beliefs and their faith comfortably. Indeed, the only way the sickness in American culture gets better is by submitting to Christ the King and His Church, not by demanding that Christ get out of public life and that the Church accommodate whatever novelty, however wretched, people come up with.

 

New “mega-dicastery” for laity, family, and life formally established

Today, the Holy Father has handed down the Apostolic Letter motu proprio data Sedula Mater, formally establishing the Dicastery for Laity, Family, and Life. He has also appointed the Bishop of Dallas, Kevin Joseph Farrell, as the first prefect of the new dicastery. Recall that the statutes of the Dicastery were approved ad experimentum in June, and scheduled to come into force in September. In an interesting twist, the statutes anticipate that the secretary of the Dicastery may be a layperson, and three lay undersecretaries (for the laity, family, and life divisions). (Art. 2 § 1.) Indeed, much about the new dicastery is interesting in comparison to the ordinary structure of a Roman congregation under Pastor Bonus. (Though Pastor Bonus, art. 3 § 1, plainly anticipates that particular law might create a unique dicastery.)

All of this is interesting, to be sure, but we are especially interested in the fact that the Holy Father approved the statutes before he created the Dicastery. Certainly, since the Dicastery is ultimately the product of a merger, for the moment, of the Pontifical Council for Laity and the Pontifical Council for the Family, with, we suppose, the anticipated involvement of the Pontifical Council for Life, perhaps it was easier to put the cart before the horse this time, but still the optics are passing strange.

Further interesting developments in the SSPX situation

We admit, at the outset, that, perhaps, “developments” isn’t the right word.

From the Society’s standpoint, one probably ought to assume that SSPX situation is where Bishop Fellay left it in his communiqué regarding negotiations with the Holy See (obliquely) and his communiqué to the members of the SSPX. That is, the Society will continue to do business as it has done business for some time, waiting, in its words, for the restoration of Tradition. Easy enough. That said, Archbishop Guido Pozzo, secretary of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei and the Vatican’s point man on negotiations with the SSPX, has given an interesting interview to Die Zeit‘s Christ & Welt section. Dr. Maike Hickson at One Peter Five has translated portions of the interview. Some coverage has been given to Pozzo’s suggestion that the canonical structure of a personal prelature (e.g., Opus Dei) has been offered to the SSPX, and Fellay has accepted. However, we’re inclined to leave that to one side, not least since there does not appear to be any confirmation from the Society that that is the case. Indeed, the public statements on the matter appear to be quite otherwise. (More on this in a minute.)

It is good, however, that there has been more, and more serious, coverage of some of Archbishop Pozzo’s statements about the Second Vatican Council. And it is perhaps proper to speak of “developments” primarily with respect to Pozzo’s statements, though we recall that these statements are not the first statements that Pozzo has made regarding the Council. In this latest interview, Pozzo continues to articulate a vision of Nostra aetate, Unitatis redintegratio, and Dignitatis humanae that seeks to assign them their proper magisterial weight, but no more than their proper weight, particularly in contrast to Lumen gentium and the Nota explicativa praevia.

In particular, Archbishop Pozzo characterizes Nostra aetate, Unitatis redintegratio, and Dignitatis humanae as essentially pastoral documents, which do not contain binding dogmatic or doctrinal declarations. Indeed, Pozzo notes (or suggests) that an erroneous interpretation of Nostra aetate has indeed sprung up, which had to be corrected in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s Declaration Dominus Iesus. Father John Hunwicke has caught on to this last bit, and observed that the Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, in its fiftieth anniversary “reflection” on Nostra aetate, “The gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable”, has itself acknowledged that there are frequent over-interpretations of Nostra aetate. (Though the Commission immediately cites John Paul’s address in Mainz in support of the interpretation that was not supported by Nostra aetate.) This is, we think, a good development, in line with Benedict’s project of the hermeneutic of continuity, though perhaps a little stronger than that project.

Of course, Archbishop Pozzo seeks to emphasize that his interpretation of the Second Vatican Council was well supported from the beginning, by noting a statement by Pericle Cardinal Felici, general secretary of the Council, that only those pronouncements explicitly declared to be binding were binding. We note, as a brief parenthesis following up on our comment on Timothy Wilson’s translation of Cardinal Bacci’s intervention, that it would be helpful if the faithful had ready access to the volume of the Acta Synodalia covering November 16, 1964, when Cardinal Felici made his statement, and November 18, 1964, when the secretary of the commission for the Unity of Christians made a similar statement about Nostra aetate. We could, then, read the statements, make our own judgments, and discuss them. But, closing the parenthesis, one wonders why Pozzo hastens to tie his interpretation to the proceedings of the Council if he does not know that, over the last fifty years, the conciliar declarations and decrees have been given nearly dogmatic weight, without serious resistance from the Roman authorities. Thus, one may speak of an implicit admission that the prevailing popular interpretation of the conciliar documents has been mostly wrong this whole time. (And the Society’s mostly right, by the same token.)

Returning to the question of a personal prelature and whether or not Bishop Fellay has already made a deal, the details of which are simply being hammered out, we observe that the Roman authorities’ position is proceeding to a place where one needs to ask if a deal is even necessary. As author and lawyer Chris Ferrara points out in the comments at One Peter Five (we’re not so clever as to think of all this ourselves), when Benedict XVI remitted the excommunications of Fellay and the other Écône bishops, he was at pains to note that the problems between the SSPX and Rome were essentially doctrinal. Indeed, Ferrara notes that Benedict stated that the Society did not possess a canonical status for doctrinal reasons, though he did not really articulate what the doctrinal roadblocks were. (One could assume that they had to do with the Council, however.) However, Archbishop Pozzo argues now that the most vexing documents with respect to the SSPX situation—documents that have been problematic from the outset of the case, if you’ll recall, for example, Archbishop Lefebvre’s unanswered dubia regarding Dignitatis humanae—are not really binding or not really doctrinal or whatever he intends to argue. The upshot of Ferrara’s argument is clear: Benedict said the problem was doctrinal, but Pozzo now says that there really is not a doctrinal problem. Based upon the evidence available—Benedict’s letter and Pozzo’s interview(s)—we find Ferrara’s position fairly compelling.

So, then, what is the problem? Is there even a problem—other than that some high prelates don’t like the Society all that much?

 

Some background on “Vultum Dei quaerere”

We wrote a couple of days ago about Vultum Dei quaerere, the Holy Father’s new apostolic constitution addressing female contemplative life. We remarked that, frankly, the document was a little mysterious to us; it seemed very specific, but ultimately obscure in its specificity. Ann Carey, at the National Catholic Register, has answered some of our questions with a lengthy, detailed background piece. Carey’s sources present Vultum Dei as a necessary update to Pius XII’s 1950 apostolic constitution Sponsa Christi, addressing particular concerns that have cropped up among cloistered religious since then:

For example, formation was a topic stressed by Pope Francis in the new document, and Sister Gabriela noted that formation had been “a major concern” that religious voiced to the CICSAL in response to the questionnaire.

“Contemplative life is so special and so demanding that it demands good formation specific to the life,” she said.

The prayer and liturgical life of the nuns also was stressed in the document, and this is related to formation as well.

“Our life will depend on our spirituality,” she said, “and the depth of our spirituality determines how well we are going to live our vocation. Cloistered life doesn’t make any sense if you don’t have a deep prayer life. It’s our relationship to Our Lord that makes the life, that demands the enclosure.”

Sister Gabriela explained that this need for good formation, plus the difficulty for modern young people to make a commitment and trust authority, no doubt prompted a change in which the Pope raised the required number of years in formation before final vows from a minimum of six years to nine years.

(Emphasis supplied.)

We still have some questions about Vultum Dei quaerere, but Carey’s informative piece has cleared up some of the mystery. Read the whole thing.

A comment on deaconesses

The Holy Father, following up on a promise he made in a Q&A to some nuns or some such, established a commission to study the question of deaconesses or women deacons, particularly the role of deaconesses in the early Church. Archbishop Luis Ladaria Ferrer, S.J., the secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, is the president of the commission, and its members are frankly a mixed bag. For example, American Professor Phyllis Zagano has been appointed to the commission, and she has been a longtime advocate for ordination of women as deacons. However, other members are allegedly somewhat more traditional in their mindset.

The argument—which can be seen at some length in the 2002 International Theological Commission study of the diaconate—is that there were deaconesses in the early (i.e., patristic-era) Church, though there remains some question about the nature of their ordination and their duties. Thus, the argument goes, notwithstanding Ordinatio sacerdotalis, the Church can return to the practice of the early Church by blessing or ordaining women to serve as deacons. Of course, in Mediator Dei, Pius XII warned us about the archaizing mindset—an “exaggerated and senseless antiquarianism”—so often adopted by progressives in the Church:

The same reasoning holds in the case of some persons who are bent on the restoration of all the ancient rites and ceremonies indiscriminately. The liturgy of the early ages is most certainly worthy of all veneration. But ancient usage must not be esteemed more suitable and proper, either in its own right or in its significance for later times and new situations, on the simple ground that it carries the savor and aroma of antiquity. The more recent liturgical rites likewise deserve reverence and respect. They, too, owe their inspiration to the Holy Spirit, who assists the Church in every age even to the consummation of the world. They are equally the resources used by the majestic Spouse of Jesus Christ to promote and procure the sanctity of man.

Assuredly it is a wise and most laudable thing to return in spirit and affection to the sources of the sacred liturgy. For research in this field of study, by tracing it back to its origins, contributes valuable assistance towards a more thorough and careful investigation of the significance of feast-days, and of the meaning of the texts and sacred ceremonies employed on their occasion. But it is neither wise nor laudable to reduce everything to antiquity by every possible device. Thus, to cite some instances, one would be straying from the straight path were he to wish the altar restored to its primitive tableform; were he to want black excluded as a color for the liturgical vestments; were he to forbid the use of sacred images and statues in Churches; were he to order the crucifix so designed that the divine Redeemer’s body shows no trace of His cruel sufferings; and lastly were he to disdain and reject polyphonic music or singing in parts, even where it conforms to regulations issued by the Holy See.

Clearly no sincere Catholic can refuse to accept the formulation of Christian doctrine more recently elaborated and proclaimed as dogmas by the Church, under the inspiration and guidance of the Holy Spirit with abundant fruit for souls, because it pleases him to hark back to the old formulas. No more can any Catholic in his right senses repudiate existing legislation of the Church to revert to prescriptions based on the earliest sources of canon law. Just as obviously unwise and mistaken is the zeal of one who in matters liturgical would go back to the rites and usage of antiquity, discarding the new patterns introduced by disposition of divine Providence to meet the changes of circumstances and situation.

(Emphasis supplied and paragraph numbers omitted.) Of course, Good Pope Pius’s argument, despite its evident authority, has not uniformly carried the day in the Church, especially since dear Archbishop Bugnini and his industrious Consilium relied on its understanding (or, occasionally, as in the case of Eucharistic Prayer 2, what it claimed as its understanding) of the antiquities of the Church to justify so many of its most egregious quote-unquote reforms. Indeed, since 1947 there has hardly been an enormity or outrage propounded by the progressives in the Church, many of whom so obviously yearn to make of the Church an ecclesial community as vibrant as the Anglicans and liberal Lutherans, that is not justified by some or other practice of the early Church.

All that having been said, we wish to contribute in a small way to the discussion by rescuing the meat of a lengthy post we had written once commenting and expanding upon a series of fascinating posts by Fr. John Hunwicke about the true nature of the diaconate. The thrust of the post was that Amalarius of Metz (Liber officialis 2.12), citing a letter of St. Jerome to Evangelus (No. 146, PL 22:1192), points out that the Levites of the Old Testament were the forerunners of the deacons of the New Testament. Amalarius then goes through the Book of Numbers at some length to outline what the duties of the Levites were, coming finally to the point that the deacons of the Church of the New Testament are responsible first for guarding, bringing, and arranging the vessels to be used on the altar during the Mass. Amalarius even views the evidence of Acts 6 as evidence that the diaconate was constituted primarily for service at the altar. Of course, there are other roles of the deacon, such as the reading of the Gospels and service as a servant in the Church, but Amalarius, citing the earlier evidence of Jerome, focuses on the deacon as a liturgical assistant to the bishop and the presbyter. St. Jerome, of course, lived in the fourth and fifth centuries, and Amalarius in the eighth and ninth. Thus, if we are being exaggerated, senseless antiquarians, we ought to be consistently so and consider their evidence, too. If we wanted to be especially polemical we would ask whether there were female Levites and whether tradition is also a means of revelation, leading you inexorably to a certain conclusion.

Once upon a time, if we wanted to be especially polemical, we would have remarked about the unity of the orders of bishop, presbyter, and deacon, but, as we learned to no small chagrin and even mild horror today, among the canon law changes implemented by Benedict XVI’s Omnium in mentem was a change to canon 1008 severing, to a greater or lesser extent, the diaconate from the episcopate and presbyterate, implying strongly that deacons do not act in the person of Christ the Head. (What precisely the deacon does when he proclaims the Gospel, thus, is somewhat mysterious to us.) Therefore, we will refrain from discoursing upon that subject, though with perhaps a haunted look over our shoulder to the older tradition of the Church.

And we have no wish to be hugely polemical on this subject—in part because others will play that part better than we could, in part because every time questions have been asked under the Holy Father, the discussion always seems to tend, as if by magic, to a particular conclusion—only to point out some interesting resources that might inform you, dear reader, as you grapple with these changes. Also, we did not want to lose forever our work with the resources of Jerome and Amalarius on the question of deacons. We are not without our vanity, it seems.