Synod 2018

From Vermeule to Newman

Former Catholic and amateur butter importer Rod Dreher has criticized Harvard Law professor and current Catholic Adrian Vermeule for his insufficiently critical stance toward Pope Francis. Dreher, currently in communion with one of the several Orthodox jurisdictions in the United States, argues that Vermeule’s ultramontanism stems from Vermeule’s Schmittian priors. You can read the blog post and decide for yourselves. However, Dreher’s screed follows hot on the heels of a general meltdown over Francis’s decision to canonize Pope Paul VI. Additionally, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò continues to publish statements about his allegations regarding the handling of Archbishop Theodore McCarrick’s case. All of these things have us thinking about the correct mode of criticism and the need for crucial distinctions.

In some circles, it seems that the default position on Francis is one of criticism. This is true both. in traditionalist circles and mainstream conservative circles. Michael Brendan Dougherty just had a cover story at National Review setting forth “the case against Pope Francis.” Likewise, Ross Douthat of the New York Times has written a lengthy book, which is in some respects very critical of Francis. Other voices from more traditionalist circles, like H.J.A. Sire and Peter Kwasniewski, have been heard, raising issues personal and theological about Francis and his pontificate. Speaking purely for ourselves, and going purely on impressions, there seems to have been a shift in the criticism of Francis from raising questions about particular acts toward a general opposition to his pontificate.

We would not pretend that there are not serious questions about Francis’s pontificate. John Joy, for example, has set out an (unanswerable) argument that the Church’s teaching on the death penalty is infallible and irreformable, despite Francis’s decision to declare it “inadmissible.” We have discussed on innumerable occasions the debate over Amoris laetitia, which seems for the moment to have died down. (Francis’s insistence on the independence of episcopal conferences seems to have cut both ways in this case.) There are other issues that have cropped up, and the ongoing Youth Synod has been a flashpoint for still other issues, including same-sex attraction, contraception, and even the ghost of liturgical reform (a ghost that has gotten long in the tooth and whose shroud is moth eaten by now).

The doctrinal issues are, to our mind, somewhat separate and apart from the ongoing crisis roiling the American Church. The current iteration of the sex-abuse scandal has led to the downfall of not only Archbishop Theodore McCarrick but also Washington’s Donald Cardinal Wuerl. It appears that the U.S. Department of Justice is launching a RICO investigation into the Church in Pennsylvania. This will, no doubt, please those Catholics who were calling for greater state intervention into the Church in the wake of the latest abuse revelations. (For our part, we are far from sure that this will end as well as the voices calling for intervention think it will.) The American crisis follows on the heels of the protracted, frankly embarrassing affair in Chile.

One might say, perhaps not unreasonably, that the default position toward Francis in these circles is critical because there is so much to be critical about. However, it seems to us that a fundamental principle is lost when the default position toward Francis becomes one of criticism. Indeed, we might go so far as to say that there is an inversion of the right order of things when this is the case. Here we could discuss Thomas, who held that fraternal correction is a matter of virtue and therefore subject to all the requirements for any act of virtue. There have been magisterial interventions, both by the Plenary Councils of Baltimore and by Leo XIII, about the duties of Catholics commenting on current events. To our knowledge, no one has collected these interventions in one place for serious study. Hopefully someone more inclined to careful research and scholarship will do so.

But maybe they don’t have to.

It may not please Professor Vermeule to know that, in all of this, we are reminded of Blessed John Henry Newman, who, in a sermon preached October 7, 1866 (somewhat before Pius IX called the Vatican Council, when the infallibility debate reached its fever pitch), said:

[W]hat need I say more to measure our own duty to it and to him who sits in it, than to say that in his administration of Christ’s kingdom, in his religious acts, we must never oppose his will, or dispute his word, or criticise his policy, or shrink from his side? There are kings of the earth who have despotic authority, which their subjects obey indeed but disown in their hearts; but we must never murmur at that absolute rule which the Sovereign Pontiff has over us, because it is given to him by Christ, and, in obeying him, we are obeying his Lord. We must never suffer ourselves to doubt, that, in his government of the Church, he is guided by an intelligence more than human. His yoke is the yoke of Christ, he has the responsibility of his own acts, not we; and to his Lord must he render account, not to us. Even in secular matters it is ever safe to be on his side, dangerous to be on the side of his enemies. Our duty is,—not indeed to mix up Christ’s Vicar with this or that party of men, because he in his high station is above all parties,—but to look at his formal deeds, and to follow him whither he goeth, and never to desert him, however we may be tried, but to defend him at all hazards, and against all comers, as a son would a father, and as a wife a husband, knowing that his cause is the cause of God.

The whole sermon is well worth reading, not least because it treats at length of the Papal States and the union between the Church and state power. However, for our purposes the extract here is sufficient.

Recall also Newman’s so-called biglietto speech, given May 12, 1879, upon the formal notification that Pope Leo XIII, who had been elected pope just over a year before, had raised Newman to the dignity of cardinal of the Holy Roman Church. “For thirty, forty, fifty years I have resisted to the best of my powers the spirit of liberalism in religion.” Newman went on to say on that occasion,

Liberalism in religion is the doctrine that there is no positive truth in religion, but that one creed is as good as another, and this is the teaching which is gaining substance and force daily. It is inconsistent with any recognition of any religion, as true. It teaches that all are to be tolerated, for all are matters of opinion. Revealed religion is not a truth, but a sentiment and a taste; not an objective fact, not miraculous; and it is the right of each individual to make it say just what strikes his fancy.

Perhaps the current criticism of Francis is not quite Newman’s loathed liberalism in religion. However, it is not so far off as one might like to imagine. Certainly the right to express one’s opinions of Francis—good, bad, especially bad, or otherwise—is implicit in all of the criticism of Francis swirling today. Therefore, it seems to us that there is something profoundly illiberal in Newman’s insistence in 1866 that, in the pope’s religious acts, Catholics “must never oppose his will, or dispute his word, or criticise his policy, or shrink from his side.” This view rejects, fundamentally, that every opinion ought to be expressed. Indeed, it holds that basically no opinion ought to be expressed, except, of course, opinions supportive of the pope’s rule over the Church.

Consequently, Professor Vermeule’s position seems to us to be an entirely reasonable anti-liberal position. One of the leading opponents of liberalism of the 19th century adopted a position no less deferential to the pope than Vermeule’s apparent ultramontanism. Of course, there are other explanations, including the notion that Professor Vermeule does not think Francis is as disastrous as his critics do. But given his thorough anti-liberalism in other respects, it is at least plausible that his attitude toward the Pope is motivated by distrust and dislike for liberalism.

Dreher is not wrong when he notes a fundamental tension in this position; that is, Francis seems a committed partisan of political and theological liberalism and it therefore is bizarre to adopt an anti-liberal attitude toward criticizing him. This, we think, is a misreading of Francis’s pontificate. It is far from clear that Francis is the liberal that has been advertised. Certainly in political and environmental terms, he is no liberal. Indeed, as Rusty Reno noted, Francis is as suspicious of liberal modernity as Pius IX ever was. And there’s a case to be made that Francis thinks that liberal modernity has rendered us incapable of strenuous moral life. This is, in fact, far bleaker than anything Pius IX ever held. And it is, of course, debatable. Highly debatable.

Even if Francis is a liberal, it is far from clear to us that the proper response is liberalism. This, then, is the crux of the problem. Barring the Head of the Church returning, there will be other popes. Perhaps some will be, in the words of the great Louisiana philosopher and theologian I.J. Reilly, good authoritarian popes. Perhaps some will be liberals. However, the anti-liberal position works as well with a good authoritarian pope as it does with a liberal pope. Indeed, it works even better. And it has the advantage of avoiding a perpetual oscillation between ultramontanism and neo-Gallicanism.

The Youth Synod

It is October, which means it is time for the Youth Synod. Already it is clear that doctrinal novelty is once more on the agenda. There has already been a skirmish about the appearance in the instrumentum laboris of the term “LGBT.” The Synod’s top official, one of Francis’s earliest supporters from his time at the Congregation for Bishops, indicated erroneously that the term had been used by youth. Not so, but he refused to remove the term, according to Life Site News. One anticipates that the Synod will be a battleground for the renewed dialectic over same-sex attraction, contraception, and other moral issues much beloved of modernists and progressives. However, the Synod comes at a difficult time for Francis, following a dreadful summer of revelations about the abuse crisis and the sense that Francis’s pontificate is winding down. It remains to be seen how much all of this will affect the final product of the Synod.

It is clear that progressives in high places have not abandoned their agenda. It is clear from the instrumentum laboris that the Synod will address youth with same-sex attraction and, once again, the battle between the divinely revealed doctrine of the Church and the pressures of secular liberalism will be joined. The same will no doubt be true with respect to contraception. No doubt other issues related to sex will be taken up, with the familiar tension between the doctrine of the Church and the apparently unfailingly progressive youth heightened. We anticipate hearing that, not only do young people want an unqualified endorsement of same-sex relationships and contraception, young people want married priests, deaconesses, and greater theological exploration of the question of ordaining women to the priesthood. Whether two-thirds of the Synod fathers will agree to these novelties remains to be seen.

In the 2014-2015 process, there was still some question about Francis’s doctrinal commitments, and that made the really extraordinary battles in the Synod seem altogether more significant. However, in 2018, it is clear where Francis’s doctrinal commitments lie. It is unlikely that he will endorse wholesale revisions of Church doctrine. Instead, the language of pastoral accompaniment and development of doctrine will be employed. In this regard the stakes for this Synod are much lower. There is, in fact, a sense that we have returned to the stage-managed Synods of John Paul II and Benedict XVI. The final report is probably mostly written. Francis can choose to endorse it and give it magisterial weight, or he can choose to issue an exhortation. It probably will not be openly heterodox, but it probably will contain ambiguities and openings to immoral conduct under the guise of discernment and pastoral accompaniment. The stories write themselves at this points.

Of course, Edward Pentin reports that there is substantial confusion about the voting procedures at the Synod, perhaps in an effort to avoid subjecting controversial propositions to a straight up-or-down vote, instead requiring bishops to vote on the entire document. Given how the 2014-2015 process worked, it is reasonable to expect that the Synod secretariat, with Francis’s support, will manipulate the process to achieve the predetermined result with a minimum of dissent. While the concept of a synodal, “listening” Church is one of Francis’s favorite talking points, there are significant questions whether this is anything more than a talking point. Clearly, the Pope likes the idea of consensus backing up certain moves; however, he has shown himself time and time again willing to go it alone, relying on his inherent authority and the willingness of his supporters to defend his decisions.

This is not to say that the outcome of the Synod is inconsequential. As we have written before, history has begun again in the Church. The dialectic between continuity and rupture, between tradition and novelty, is in full swing, and this Synod will be for a few weeks the epicenter of the process. Perhaps this one is a little different, in that it is impossible to deny that things have changed in the world and even the pastoral strategies of 1978, 1988, 1998, or 2008 are inadequate to reach today’s youth. Traditionally minded Catholics point to the young people who engage enthusiastically with tradition; modernists point to the young people who want same-sex relationships blessed and contraception permitted. The strategy of tension employed by modernists since the days of Pascendi will no doubt be observed. But to say that the dialectic is inconsistent with apostolic faith, which rests primarily in tradition, and has since the days of St. Paul (cf. Gal. 1:8), is somewhat beside the point. The fact is that the dialectic will take place.

Nevertheless, is an autumnal feel to this process, and not only because it is happening in October. There is a sense that there is more time behind Francis than before him. Already people are making plans for the next conclave. In fact, just in the last couple of days, it has been announced that a well funded group is going to be investigating cardinal electors so that compromised candidates will be known prior to entering the conclave. (The suggestion is that Cardinal Bergoglio was compromised and would not have been elected pope if that had been known; whether or not this is true is anyone’s guess.) There is not much reason to think this, other than Francis’s age. Unlike John Paul II, Francis has not had high-profile health crises or sudden trips to the Gemelli clinic. And unlike Benedict XVI, who grew visibly frail before abdicating, Francis does not appear to be weakening with age. It is strange therefore that all this activity is taking place. However, there is still a feeling that the Synod may be one of the last major engagements of Francis’s pontificate. For this reason, despite the lower stakes and likelihood of few surprises, the Synod may well be significant as a sort of referendum on the future direction of a post-Francis Church.

However, for reasons entirely aside from doctrine, this Synod comes at a terrible time for Francis (and the Church). There has been a steady drumbeat of allegations that Francis has either downplayed abuse or simply ignored abuse. It began with the case of Bishop Juan Barros in Osorno in Chile, who was accused of being involved with the coverup of Chile’s most notorious abuser, Fernando Karadima. Francis first backed Barros, but that position became untenable when it was revealed that one of Karadima’s victims had passed a letter to Francis through Cardinal O’Malley regarding Barros’s involvement. The affair resulted in the abdication of most of Chile’s bishops, though only some of the resignations have been accepted—most notably Barros’s. Given Francis’s decision to back Barros in unmistakable terms, the affair damaged his credibility on abuse.

However, the fall of former Washington archbishop Theodore McCarrick has proved to be a more serious crisis for Francis than even the Barros affair. McCarrick, long one of the most prominent figures in the American Church, was credibly accused of sexual misconduct with seminarians and a minor. Rumors about McCarrick had circulated for years, even reaching the Vatican when a professor at a seminary wrote to Rome about McCarrick’s behavior after his appointment to Washington was announced. Quickly, McCarrick resigned from the cardinalate and was ordered to a life of prayer and penance while the canonical process wound its way through Rome. Given McCarrick’s prominence and influence, the case was proving to be embarrassing for Francis and some of his most prominent American supporters.

Until Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò wrote a lengthy “testimony” about a long-running coverup in Rome of McCarrick’s misconduct. Viganò made many allegations, the upshot of which is that Benedict XVI ordered McCarrick out of public life, and Francis rescinded the order because McCarrick was a friend and supporter of Francis. Francis has not really answered the allegations. However, it appears that Benedict XVI did direct McCarrick to keep a lower profile, but McCarrick basically ignored the direction. It is impossible to say more than this, given the Vatican’s silence on the matter and the fact that some key figures, such as Pietro Sambi, the former nuncio, are dead.

In the background of the allegations about what Francis knew or didn’t know, the American Church has been dealing with another iteration of the abuse crisis, this time focused on several Pennsylvania dioceses. While Philadelphia had addressed the past instances of abuse and coverup, other dioceses had not, and the Pennsylvania attorney general initiated a grand jury probe. The results of the probe are chilling: over 70 years hundreds of predator priests abused over a thousand children. There have been calls for immediate action, ranging from greater civil oversight of the Church to improved reporting and compliance mechanisms within the Church, including greater participation by the laity.

However, the overwhelming reaction to the Pennsylvania report has been grief and outrage. Washington’s Donald Cardinal Wuerl, who was bishop of Pittsburgh for some of the time covered by the report, was named and accused of furthering the coverup of an instance of abuse. He contests the allegations, but he has also indicated that he intends on asking the Pope to accept his resignation so that Washington can move forward with new leadership. Joseph Cardinal Tobin, whose Newark archdiocese has a direct connection to McCarrick’s abuse, has informed Francis that he will not be attending the Synod, instead staying in Newark to address the issues there. One has only to look at Twitter or Facebook or do a Google search to see the numerous outraged comments from Catholics stunned by all these revelations.

With all of this going on, the Youth Synod seems like a pointless exercise. For one thing, many youth find the abuse crisis to be a major stumbling block in their relationship with the Church. Indeed, it seems that the abuse situation has the potential to undermine any renewed presentation or engagement with young people. It will not make much difference if clergy present Church teachings in a new, more attractive and understandable light if clergy are simply not believed by young people, upset and confused by the abuse crisis. Given that there are allegations about Francis’s conduct, though the allegations are by no means proved, it is impossible to dismiss this as a purely American problem.