Syllabus

The 1998 Doctrinal Commentary and the Papal Magisterium

In recent days—which is to say, in the wake of the Holy Father’s comments on the plane ride back from Mexico—we have noticed some worried analyses, the thrust of which is that the Magisterium is in jeopardy. Fr. John Hunwicke has reposted some comments he wrote after the explicitly non-magisterial statement on the Church’s relations with the Jews. Likewise, Fr. Ray Blake has offered some thoughts about the Magisterium under the Holy Father.

It seems to us that Cardinal Ratzinger’s Doctrinal Commentary on the so-called concluding formula of the Professio Fidei required by Ad tuendam Fidem as relevant than ever. Obviously, Cardinal Ratzinger was writing in a very different context; however, the Doctrinal Commentary offers some precision in thinking about the Magisterium, including any given pope’s teachings, that is helpful to sort out situations like the Holy Father’s statements on Zika virus and contraception.

Just a thought.

 

Teach the controversy?

Timothy Wilson’s translation of excerpts from Cardinal Zigliara’s Summa philosophica continues at The Josias. Today: the error of “liberty of teaching.” While perhaps not as pressing as the question of toleration of non-Christian cults, this is still an important question. The Cardinal’s analysis begins:

Question. Simultaneously one with liberty of conscience and of cult, there is proclaimed by the more recent liberalism a liberty of teaching, particularly with respect to the means with which it is principally exercised, namely, with respect to liberty of the press (la libertá della stampa). We ask, therefore, whether this liberty is upright, and to be approved by the civil authority. Here again I caution that the discussion is concerned, not with tolerance, but with approbation: evils indeed are able to be tolerated, yet naught but goods ought to be approved.

(Emphasis in original.) You should read the whole thing at The Josias.

For our part, we note that the question of the rights of error seems to be more, not less, important with each passing day.

Cardinal Zigliara on “liberty of conscience”

At The Josias, Timothy Wilson’s translation of excerpts from Cardinal Zigliara’s Summa philosophica is being rolled out. Hopefully, you’ve bookmarked The Josias to keep up with this fascinating series. Today, an especially important excerpt on the liberty of conscience. A brief, edited selection:

Liberty of conscience, considered in itself, is entirely impious. And indeed, man, by a most strict duty of nature, is held to think rightly of God, and of those things which look to religion, both speculative and practical (33, II). But voluntarily to make resistance to a most strict duty is license, not liberty; and if the discussion, as in our argument, is concerned with the voluntary transgression of a duty toward God, the aforementioned license is an impiety. Since, therefore, through liberty of conscience, a right is given to man of thinking of God as it more pleases him, this liberty, this right is a true impiety.

[…]

It is founded in political atheism alone. And indeed, as has been said in the preceding number, liberty of conscience is a right, conceded to individuals, of thinking of God as they should please, or of submitting those things which are of God and religion, and the duties following from these, to the definition and arbitration of individual conscience, which thus is constituted as the criterion of religion.

(Emphases in original.) Strong medicine, especially today, when we hear so much about liberty of conscience and the other foundational doctrines of the modern liberal state.

Cardinal Zigliara on political atheism

The Josias has made available a selection from Tommaso Maria Cardinal Zigliara’s Summa philosophica, dealing with political atheism. Timothy Wilson, a fine Latinist with a deep interest in the (now largely forgotten) scholastic and manualist tradition, translated the selection for publication. Cardinal Zigliara, a Dominican, was a noted Thomist of the late nineteenth century. A close collaborator of Leo XIII, Cardinal Zigliara was a contributor to Leo’s encyclicals Aeterni Patris, which restored the Common Doctor to his place of preeminence among the theologians, and Rerum novarum. This is the first of five selections, according to The Josias, and we will be following the series with great interest.

By the way, if you have not been following The Josias, you have been missing out. In addition to regular essays from the perspective of the Church’s traditional social teaching, the site makes available many important documents that have long been unavailable for linguistic reasons. For example, earlier this year, The Josias published a translation of Pius IX’s Maxima quidem, an allocution that ultimately served as the basis for several propositions condemned in his wonderful Syllabus Errorum. It is well worth checking from time to time.

Houses where love can dwell

At Ethika Politika, Peter J. Leithart, apparently seized by the spirit of late October, urges Catholics “to become protestant.” What does that mean? It means that the Church should abandon most of the distinctively Catholic features that are, at this point, not only dogmatic—Leithart has a real burr under his saddle about Ineffabilis Deus and Munificentissimus Deus and the rest of the Marian dogmas—but also deeply traditional. And to what end? We’ll leave that for you to find out, dear reader.

We add only this as a comment: in the great Pope Pius’s Syllabus errorum, the annex to his great encyclical Quanta cura, the eighteenth condemned proposition is Protestantismus non aliud est quam diversa verae eiusdem christianae religionis forma, in qua aeque ac in Ecclesia catholica Deo placere datum est. (The source for this proposition is Pius’s 1849 encyclical, Nostis et nobiscum.)