Chairman's Blog

Ecce sacerdos magnus: Cardinal Burke enters St James', Spanish Place, to confer the sacrament of Confirmation last November, in a service organised by the Latin Mass Society.

It is hardly surprising that the Exhortation Amoris laetitia has provoked a range of responses, but I was struck by the unhappiness expressed by Steve Skojec on One Peter Five about the response of Cardinal Burke - Skojec expressed great disapointment that it was not more strongly-worded. Skojec would perhaps have the same thing to say about the response of the British Confraternity of Catholic Clergy, of the canonist Edward Peters, and of my own response. These, as a group, certainly contrast with Skojec's response, the responses of Antonio Socci and of Prof de Mattei published on Rorate Caeli, the response of Voice of the Family, and many others from a Traditional Catholic or conservative perspective, as they do with the response of avowed liberals. Readers can populate the categories with further examples for themselves.

The liberals are telling us that the Communion for the divorced and remarried is now allowed.

The group I will call Skojec's, for want of a better label, is telling us that the Exhortation is a 'disaster' because the liberal reading is a natural one.

What Cardinal Burke and his group are saying is that, if you look carefully at the document, and in particular at the key passages the liberals appeal to, it turns out that it makes no attempt to establish new teaching, or even make formal changes to discipline, for example by changing Canon Law.

As I have just characterised them, the Skojec reading and the Burke reading are not necessarily in conflict. It can be true that, from a logical, theological, and canonical point of view, the Exhortation doesn't make any difference, but also true that it is going to be hard to argue against the liberal contention that it makes a big difference in practice. This is in fact frequently the case with Church documents.

Here is a relevant question, however. My longstanding concern has been with the situation of priests under pressure to give Holy Communion to public sinners, something they cannot in conscience do: a group well represented by the Confraternity of Catholic Clergy. They haven't been skewered, in this Exhortation, in quite the way widely predicted, but liberals are celebrating as if they have been: as if they have been ordered by the Pope to act against their consciences and the tradition of the Church. The question is: is it more helpful to priests in this situation to agree with the liberals that, 'practically speaking', or 'on a natural reading', they have been ordered to do this?

No, it is not helpful, and not for reasons of presentation or politics, but because these priests' subjective moral situation is not changed by any such 'practically speaking', 'natural reading' of the document. On many matters, though not this one, it would be changed by a properly formulated papal command, or a change in Canon Law, but that is not what we have here.

What Skojec is, perhaps, saying, is that we have a situation like King Henry II shouting out, in 1170, 'Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?' Henry wanted his knights to kill St Thomas Becket, but did not want to order them to do so. He wanted to be able to deny doing so; he knew that, even if he'd attempted to put his command into formal language, it would have been legally invalid, since he did not have the legal or moral authority order extrajudical killings. The knights weren't exactly wrong in their interpretation of the King's words; where they were woefully mistaken was in imagining that these words gave them any kind of warrant, legal or moral, to carry out the King's wishes.

In this situation it does not become irrelevant that the King failed to issue a proper decree, or that he did not have the authority to issue such a decree anyway. No: it becomes a matter of supreme importance. What we need to emphasise is that the King's outburst makes no legal or moral difference. This seems to be something Skojec and others have missed.

Supposing the King had issued a decree. Suppose the Pope had changed Canon Law. Then I would have felt the obligation to point out - as I already have hypothetically - that whatever Canon Law said, priests remain bound by Divine and Natural Law on this subject. It may be that Cardinal Burke, the Confraternity of Catholic Clergy, and others in this group, would have felt the same. I wonder if that was what Cardinal Sarah had in mind when he said that there were things that the Church in Africa would not accept. Perhaps that's what Cardinal Pell was thinking of when, according to reports, he warned the Holy Father that certain options would lead to schism. At any rate, a lot of people would have felt obliged to go into battle in a whole new way if that had happened. Well, we have avoided that, thanks be to God. Perhaps it was never going to happen; perhaps we were a hair's breadth away from it happening: I don't know. The significance of it not happening is completely lost on the liberals, who have long ago given up on the concepts of Divine and Natural Law, and neither understand nor care about Canon Law. But it is of fundamental importance.

Cardinal Burke and those who think like him don't necessarily have to disagree in substance with what Skojec and others are saying about the tone of the Exhortation, the dangers it contains, the way it is likely to be applied and so on. Skojec and his ilk ought to see, however, that what Burke is doing is necessary and supremely valuable. He is placing the Exhortation, and whatever negative outcomes it may, in practice, cause, into the correct category: not as a schism-causing event, not as a case of a Pope teaching heresy, but as a non-magisterial, non-legislative document which points out, when you get down to line-by-line analysis, that people are often in very complicated situations and should be treated with charity.

There is a very important difference between the position taken up by Cardinal Burke, and those like him, and an extreme Ultramontanist position, the position which says the Pope is always right. One difference is hypothetical: what would have happened if the Exhortation had been different. But there is another very important difference. Cardinal Burke lays great stress on interpreting Church documents in light of the whole tradition of the Church. This is of huge importantance, and it is something the Ultramontanists fail to do. This is frequently going to lead Catholics with a lively sense of tradition to read documents in a different way from others. It doesn't mean that we blind ourselves to the practical implications, the perspectic of the secular media, and so on. What it means is that we don't, like Ultramontanists, feel we have change our entire world-view every time there is a new Pope with a new set of priorities or way of expressing himself. And nor do we have to become sede vacantists.

To reiterate what I've said a few times, Traditional Catholics, or at least those of us trying to engage with the hierarchy, magisterial documents, and the currently 'officially approved' theology, have become very used to this situation. A liberal says to us: the Church now allows Communion in the Hand, and the natural way of reading this is about us being adults, whereas in the past we were treated as children: ergo, the traditional practice is theologically defective. We say: if that were true, it would be a breach with the constant teaching and practice of the Church. Let's look at the relevant documents: well, what do you know, Paul VI explicitly denied the liberal interpretation ('The [traditional] custom does not detract in any way from the personal dignity of those who approach this great sacrament'). The liberal may protest that no-one takes any notice of that, but it is there. But then again, even if Pope Paul had gone mad and condemned the old practice as actually defective, then the weight of the tradition would be enough to show that it was legitimate. 

We can go on to infer, from the very fact that we are having this conversation with the liberals, that there is a problem with Communion in the Hand, since it is causing confusion and cutting people off from the wisdom of the Church's tradition. What we can't do is to see the official permission for the new practice as condemning the old one. The new practice may be a mistake, but it is not a case of Rome falling into heresy.

This is not dishonest, and it is not cowardly. We are deeply interested in setting out our case in way which is comprehensible to mainstream Catholic theologians and people in the Roman Curia, and appeals to things they recognise have weight, but we are under no illusions that our views will make us popular. Our approach is, in fact, about looking at facts squarely in the face. These facts include the way the document is going to be understood by liberals and by the media. They also include the precise theological and canonical assertions a document is and is not making, and the light shed on the issues by the Church's whole teaching and tradition. Ignoring any of these facts cripples one's ability to deal rationally and appropriately with the situation.

Cardinal Burke distributing Holy Communion at the Latin Mass Society's annual Requiem in Westminster Cathedral.

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High Mass of Requiem at the LMS Priest Training Conference, Prior Park.

I've done a series of posts about the Exhortation now, focusing on particular passages. I must confess that it has not conformed to my expectations, and I suspect those of many, if not most, people. I had been expecting a more explicit addressing of the pastoral issues which have been so discussed in the last two years or so, with some practical guidance for priests, for example, about offering Holy Communion to couples in illicit unions. Instead, it has offered us a lot of discussion at a slightly more abstract level, and explicitly refused to make new rules, instead drawing our attention to a number of relevant factors, without telling us how to weigh those factors against each other.

It was predictable that different people would point to different passages and claim victory for different views. However, Pope Francis has deprived liberals (and depressed conservatives) of any passages (at least, which I have as yet got into focus) which say simply and clearly even that pastoral practice should change in a particular direction. The other thing he had not done is what we had at the end of the last Synod, which was a condemnation of the excesses of both sides of the debate.

As far as these more abstract discussions go, among a lot of other things, some very helpful, we have passages which take seriously some of the arguments made by Cardinal Kasper about the difficult situation some people find themselves in.

Thus, Kasper argued (so far as I could tell) that grave sins, done in full knowledge of their gravity, could be compatible with the life of grace, and therefore with reception of Holy Communion, because of the psychological difficulty of avoiding them, and of the need to maintain a home for the children of an adulterous relationship. The Exhortation mentions all the elements of this view, but it doesn't, quite, draw Kasper's conclusion.

Thus we hear that, just because a couple is in an illicit union on some definition or other, doesn't mean that they are in a state of mortal sin. There may be complicating factors. True: for example, there may be a failure of moral knowledge, or the couple may be living as 'brother and sister', or they may just have gone to Confession and be working things out. The subsequent discussion, however, does not appeal to any of these possibilities. Instead, it draws attention to other kinds of complication, which, while interesting and important, won't stop acts of adultery being mortally sinful, such as a concern for the health of the relationship in light of the children, force of habit, and other psychological impediments to a conversion of life. Then again, the Exhortation doesn't draw the conclusion that the second kind of complicating factors are such that the sins committed are not mortal. It leaves that up to the judgment of pastors...

It is open to people to say: this is teaching by hint, or 'dog-whistle'. But it also raises the question: if the Pope really wanted everyone to conclude that, for example, an adulterous couple with a strong habit of vice and a child whose home is underpinned by the sinful relationship, can receive sacramental absolution without a firm purpose of ending their acts of adultery, why did he not just say so? If the Pope did want to say that, and drew back from saying it, I suppose his reason must have been a concern not to cause things like scandal, schism, and an open break with the teaching of the recent Papal Magisterium, not to mention Scripture and the Fathers. On this presupposition, it is a deliberate decision, and the way we understand the teaching must respect the fact that the decision was made as it was. The Pope could have told adulterers to go to Communion with a light heart; he did not do so.

Catholics attached to the liturgical traditions of the Church, Catholics who seek to live in organic continuity with their predecessors in terms of belief, practice, liturgy and spirituality, are very familiar with this way of proceeding. I could list a dozen examples of Popes and other organs of the Church issuing documents which seemed, if not actually motivated by a rejection of traditional teaching, then are at least motivated by a desire not to be in conflict with those who reject it, to a greater or lesser extent. I have listed a number of examples here. In these documents, however, the rejection of the traditional teaching is never made quite explicit. On the contrary, lip service is made to the old teaching, sometimes very emphatically, while its practical implications are quietly swept away.

The practical implications of the Church's teaching about adultery include refusing Communion to adulterers, if the adultery is public. It may be that, with the subtle encouragement of the arguments of this Exhortation, that will be swept away, at least, even more than it already has been. There is a great difference, however, between this process and one in which priests are explicitly told that public sinners should be admitted to Communion.

Why? Because priests who doen't respond to the hints, if that is what they are, will not be in such a disastrously weak position they would have been in, had the Pope made an explicit change to Canon Law and the Catechism. I am thinking of their vulnerability not only to discipline within the Church, but against the secular law: I discussed the problem here.

Furthermore, in this case, as with a myriad of other cases over the last half century, we are not in a situation of a Pope explicitly teaching heresy. We can say whatever we like about how he should have been clearer, should have reiterated this or that teaching: perhaps he should. But he is not publicly and explicitly teaching heresy. This is important; it makes a big difference. Popes can teach heresy, they are not protected from doing that except under very specific conditions, and it has happened more than once in the history of the Church. It didn't happen yesterday, for all that the Exhortation was unclear or confusing. Even if we say it was malicious, even if we suppose that the Pope is a heretic in his heart, the document that we have before us does not contain propositions incompatible with the teaching of the Church - at least, that's my view, for what it is worth.

What we have now is not the final melt-down of the Church. We have, perhaps, a negative step, but if so it is one of many. We may perhaps say that the teaching of the Church is not as clear as it was, but this obscuring of the teaching has been a long, slow process. More serious, I think, by far, than Amoris laetitia, was the deliberate removal of dozens and dozens of references to sin, God's anger, damnation, repentance, penance, and grace, from the prayers of the liturgy, which happened with the promulgation of the 1970 Missal. That was a disaster for the Church, and the consequences continue to make themselves felt. It wasn't the proclamation of heresy: no, and that makes the whole sorry business harder to combat, in some ways. But in another way it means that there is something we can each and every one of us do, to reinforce the threatened truth: and that is, to pray the ancient liturgy, and to promote it.

See also my post on Pope Francis on the Mandatum and liturgical developments under his predecessors.

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Fr Magdala Mari F.SS.R. performs the Ritus Aspersionis. Outside Eastertide, the accompanying chant is about how we want to washed 'whiter than snow.' In Eastertide, the focus is on the flow of this cleansing water, from the side of Christ on the Cross.

A passage making the same kind of point as the one I discussed in my last post is embellished with a footnote which has raised eyebrows - and was flagged up in the press conference. It is part of section 305.

Because of forms of conditioning and mitigating factors, it is possible that in an objective situation of sin – which may not be subjectively culpable, or fully such – a person can be living in God’s grace, can love and can also grow in the life of grace and charity, while receiving the Church’s help to this end.

Note (351): In certain cases, this can include the help of the sacraments. Hence, “I want to remind priests that the confessional must not be a torture chamber, but rather an encounter with the Lord’s mercy” (Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium [24 November 2013], 44: AAS 105 [2013], 1038). I would also point out that the Eucharist “is not a prize for the perfect, but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak” (ibid. , 47: 1039).

While this might be as clear as one might like, I don't see what the fuss is about here.

On the main text, it is perfectly true that one can commit an act which is objectively sinful, without incurring the guilt of a subjective sin, if one is non-culpably ignorant that the act is sinful. This may be the result of ignorance about the nature of the act, as well as about the application of the moral law to the case at issue. 'Conditioning', in the sense of one's moral and practical education, may be involved in such mistakes.

It should be mentioned that ignorance of the most general principles of the Natural Law is not, in fact, possible, since is it written on our hearts (Romans 1:19f). Aquinas explains, accordingly, that moral ignorance is possible only of specific applications. Suprisingly, he then gives the example of ancient Germans apparantly not knowing that theft was wrong, which suggests that pretty basic parts of the Natural Law could still be at issue. Nevertheless, none of this is any use to liberals, as section 301 (discussed in my last post) makes clear, because the cases they want to focus on don't involve moral ignorance, however widely or narrowly construed. On the contrary, they want to talk about lifelong, practicing Catholics, well-informed about the Faith, constantly on the phone to the bishop and writing to the Catholic papers, 'churchy' people, or, as they say in Austria, 'candle cormorants' ('kurzlschlucker'). People who pay the Church tax. And naturally, if ignorance were an issue, it could be dispelled by a little teaching.

In light of this, the footnote, which anyway only repeats what Evangelii gaudium already said, is a statement of the obvious. The phrase 'the confessional must not be a torture chamber, but rather an encounter with the Lord’s mercy', reminds me of the splendid Fr Magdala Maria F.SS.R. at our recent Family Retreat, who after telling about the danger of eternal damnation in classic Redemptorist fashion, reminded us that his spitirual father and model, St Alphonsus, was 'a lion in the pulpit and a lamb in the confessional'. No one should be too afraid to go in the box.

And what of the Blessed Sacrament? Is it 'not a prize for the perfect, but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak'? Yes, this is perfectly true. Not for those in mortal sin - no, they are not weak, they are dead. They need to be brought back to life by sacramental absolution, in Confession. But when you crawl out of the Confessional, alive but weak, you should go to Holy Communion, and do so frequently.

Perhaps Pope Francis meant something else? I can only comment on the text we have. It went through a complicated process of editing and refinement, no doubt. Efforts were made, as they always have been made with important documents, to avoid statements which are wrong. At any rate in this passage, those efforts were successful.

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Children in Mass at the recent Family Retreat,

Since the Post-Synodal Exhortation Amoris laetitia is not the bombshell many were assuming, confining itself, on the 'hot button' issues, to what appears to be a restatment of the status quo (priests have to assess matters case by case, Holy Communion is not a reward for perfection etc. etc.), here is something which other news sources may neglect, but which was mentioned briefly in the Press Conference: the Holy Father has a surprising amount to say about Fathers. Surprising only because it is a subject, as I have lamented on this blog, which has been somewhat neglected in the Church. So here is a long quotation, sections 175-177. (Mothers are discussed in the immediately preceding sections. I don't include the footnotes, which refer to the sources of the internal quotations: mostly speeches of Pope Francis himself.) The full text is here (h-t Edward Pentin).

A mother who watches over her child with tenderness and compassion helps him or her to grow in confidence and to experience that the world is a good and welcoming place. This helps the child to grow in self-esteem and, in turn, to develop a capacity for intimacy and empathy. A father, for his part, helps the child to perceive the limits of life, to be open to the challenges of the wider world, and to see the need for hard work and strenuous effort. A father possessed of a clear and serene masculine identity who demonstrates affection and concern for his wife is just as necessary as a caring mother. There can be a certain flexibility of roles and responsibilities, depending on the concrete cirumstances of each particular family. But the clear and well-defined presence of both figures, female and male, creates the environment best suited to the growth of the child.

We often hear that ours is “a society without fathers”. In Western culture, the father figure is said to be symbolically absent, missing or vanished. Manhood itself seems to be called into question. The result has been an understandable confusion. “At first, this was perceived as a liberation: liberation from the father as master, from the father as the representative of a law imposed from without, from the father as the arbiter of his children’s happiness and an obstacle to the emancipation and autonomy of young people. In some homes authoritarianism once reigned and, at times, even oppression”. Yet, “as often happens, one goes from one extreme to the other. In our day, the problem no longer seems to be the overbearing presence of the father so much as his absence, his not being there. Fathers are often so caught up in themselves and their work, and at times in their own self-fulfilment, that they neglect their families. They leave the little ones and the young to themselves”. The presence of the father, and hence his authority, is also impacted by the amount of time given over to the communications and entertainment media. Nowadays authority is often considered suspect and adults treated with impertinence. They themselves become uncertain and so fail to offer sure and solid guidance to their children.

A reversal of the roles of parents and children is unhealthy, since it hinders the proper process of development that children need to experience, and it denies them the love and guidance needed to mature.

God sets the father in the family so that by the gifts of his masculinity he can be “close to his wife and share everything, joy and sorrow, hope and hardship. And to be close to his children as they grow – when they play and when they work, when they are carefree and when they are distressed, when they are talkative and when they are silent, when they are daring and when they are afraid, when they stray and when they get back on the right path. To be a father who is always present. When I say ‘present’, I do not mean ‘controlling’. Fathers who are too controlling overshadow their children, they don’t let them develop”. Some fathers feel they are useless or unnecessary, but the fact is that “children need to find a father waiting for them when they return home with their prob-lems. They may try hard not to admit it, not to show it, but they need it”. It is not good for children to lack a father and to grow up before they are ready,

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