Chairman's Blog
A friendly warning to Opus Dei
I don't want to single out Opus Dei; what I have to say is applicable to a number of conservative Catholic organisations. But Opus Dei does rather single out itself.
We had the organisations 'number 2', the Vicar General, Mgr Mariano Fazio, criticising the Filial Correction for 'correcting a father in public':
Any faithful, bishop, cardinal, lay person has the right to tell the pope what he sees fit for the good of the Church. But it seems to me that he has no right to do so publicly and to scandalize the whole Church with these manifestations of disunity.
A number of innovations of a doctrinal nature are to be found in the documents of the Second Vatican Council: on the sacramental nature of the episcopate, on episcopal collegiality, on religious freedom, etc. These innovations in matters concerning faith or morals, not proposed with a definitive act, still require religious submission of intellect and will, even though some of them were and still are the object of controversy with regard to their continuity with earlier magisterial teaching, or their compatibility with the tradition. In the face of such difficulties in understanding the continuity of certain Conciliar Teachings with the tradition, the Catholic attitude, having taken into account the unity of the Magisterium, is to seek a unitive interpretation in which the texts of the Second Vatican Council and the preceding Magisterial documents illuminate each other. Not only should the Second Vatican Council be interpreted in the light of previous Magisterial documents, but also some of these earlier magisterial documents can be understood better in the light of the Second Vatican Council. This is nothing new in the history of the Church. It should be remembered, for example, that the meaning of important concepts adopted in the First Council of Nicaea in the formulation of the Trinitarian and Christological faith (hypóstasis, ousía), were greatly clarified by later Councils.
The problems with this paragraph are many, and I don't want to give his article a detailed critique, so to keep it brief I invite the reader to answer for him or herself the following two questions:
1. Given that Council documents and other official documents contain both statements of the Ordinary Magisterium and other kinds of proposition, such as historical and scientific claims (such as are not inseparably connected with teaching), prudential judgements, and theological speculations, would the loyal Catholic not need to apply his mind first to determining what was actually magisterial in a document before submitting intellect and will to it?
Anyone who thinks that the non-magisterial content of one official document cannot contradict that of another simply needs to read a few. The mutually-contradictory Papal Bulls of the Franciscan property debate would be one place to start.
2. When the meaning of putatively magisterial statements in Council or other official documents are disputed, and where such disputes are themselves legitimate, how is it possible to submit one's intellect and will to them? How can one submit one's intellect to a statement whose meaning one cannot determine?
What seems reasonably clear is that the top two officials of Opus Dei are inviting Catholics to adopt an attitude of pre-emptive intellectual submission towards anything emanating from Rome, without making use of the right - which can also be a duty - to inform our fellow Catholics of their concerns about such emanations. Yes, they say, there can be ambiguities and problems, but obedience of the intellect comes first, acceptance come first, and attempts to smooth over the problems can follow later.
I've been told in comments on this blog, what I already knew, which is that Opus Dei contains many Good People. Of course it does. These are, in fact, among the most good-hearted and faithful Catholics whom one could hope to meet. It is through no lack of charity towards them that I write as a I do: quite the contrary. While I know that what I write will have no effect at all on the leadership of the organisation, I want to warn those who are members, and those associated with the many other organisations which include what we call 'conservative' Catholics, of the dangers of the road you are going down, when you start thinking of obedience as the chief or even the only virtue, instead of humility, justice, courage, charity, and the virtue of faith itself.
One danger, which follows obviously from what I have just said, is a spiritual distortion arising from a failure to recognise and cultivate the full set of virtues. That is something readers will just have to meditate upon. I want to focus on two other dangers.
The first is that it leads into anti-intellectualism. Perhaps this doesn't look like a big deal, but it will destroy the intellectual prestige of your communities and drive out those of your members of an intellectual bent. People with an intellectual formation who are honest will not be able to stick it: it will drive them nuts.
The second problem derives from the fact that when the wind changes direction, the internal policy will follow also. This isn't some uncharitable speculation on my part, it is exactly what Mgr Ocariz is saying. A new Pope, a new policy, and a new document, and all the 'faithful Catholics' who follow his advice will be reading the 'innovation' back into previous documents, submitting their intellects, and tying themselves into knots to say that what they'd previously said was black is actually, now you come to look at it, white. You may think we'll have to wait for a new Pope to see this happening, but no, we can see it happening with the current Pope.
It is a fact, and not a particularly disturbing one in itself, that Papal policy changes. Again, anyone doubting this just needs to do some reading, but a nice example is the maddening succession of policy reversals the Popes made towards the 'Chinese Rites'. Now it may be that such changes of policy require obedience on the basis of the disciplinary authority of the Pope, but anyone living through a period such as that who tries to justify each policy as correct, as in continuity with previous rules, and as based on fundamental magisterial principles, because he does not want to admit that official documents should ever be disagreed with, has got a problem.
He has got, in fact, the problem that the British Communist Party had in and just before the the Second World War. First the Party Line was that the Nazis were evil, as they were persecuting communists in Germany. Then the Party Line was to be neutral in the war against Germany, since the Soviet Union was allied to the Nazis. And then the Party Line was to support the war with Germany, since the Soviet Union was at war with them itself. Each had to be passed off as eternally true for fundamental ideological reasons.
Although in France and Italy the Communists were able to retrieve some self-respect by their resistence to occupation, in Britain the flip-flopping did irreparable damage to the Party's credibility. The same thing is going to happen to any organisation which claims to base itself on objective principles which does repeated 'backflips', to use Cardinal Pell's phrase. To put it bluntly, this will destroy your community.
Am I applying this to Opus Dei? Let me correct that impression. Really, what I have been saying applies to the Catholic Church as a whole over the last half-century. We have all seen it: good-hearted and loyal people twisting themselves into pretzels to make everything seem ok, but other Catholic intellectuals just dropping out of the whole game because it looks incompatible with intellectual self-respect. And yet others, observing all this, concluding that the Church doesn't really stand for anything much any more.
That's a lesson we should learn from. If we don't, we are going to repeat it till we do.
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‘Pro-Pope Francis’ petition launched
V. Let us pray for our holy Father the Pope.
R. The Lord preserve him, and give him life, and make him blessed upon earth, and deliver him not up to the will of his enemies.
Let us pray.
O Almighty and eternal God, have mercy on thy servant Francis, our Pope, and direct him according to thy clemency into the way of everlasting salvation; that he may desire by thy grace those things which are pleasing to thee, and perform them with all his strength. Through Christ our Lord.
R. Amen.
See also the LifeSiteNews report.
Oxford Pilgrimage this Saturday
This Saturday, 21st October, the annual Latin Mass Society Pilgrimage to Oxford will take place.
11am High Mass in the Dominican Rite, Blackfriars, in St Giles, Oxford
2pm Procession to the Castle Gallows, site of the martyrdom of Bl George Napier in 1610
3pm Benediction in Blackfriars
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Ultramontanism's Death Sentence
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Pope Pius XII |
It must be clearly stated that the death penalty is an inhumane measure that, regardless of how it is carried out, abases human dignity. It is per se contrary to the Gospel, because it entails the willful suppression of a human life that never ceases to be sacred in the eyes of its Creator and of which – ultimately – only God is the true judge and guarantor.
Again:
It is necessary, therefore, to reaffirm that no matter how serious the crime that has been committed, the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and the dignity of the person.
Presumably, in 1952 all good Ultramontanists said that, because the Pope had said so, it follows that it is true that the death penalty is not only permissible, but for sufficiently serious crimes, uniquely appropriate. (What else does it mean, to say that a criminal has 'disposed' of his 'right to life'?)
Of Pope Francis' statement, to put it mildly, this cannot be said.
Note: the liceity of capital punishment is the first of the propositions discussed in the Appeal to Cardinals of the 45 Theologians, which gives more references.
Cardinal Dulles gives a thorough account of the teaching of the Church on First Things here.
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Fr Thomas Crean on whether Amoris is 'Thomistic'
LifeSiteNews carries an interview with Fr Thomas Crean OP on the use of St Thomas Aquinas by Amoris laetitia, in light of Christoph, Cardinal Schönborn's claim that the document is 'Thomistic'.
Read the whole thing there; I paste in an extract below.
More serious because more plausible misuse
Read the whole thing on LifeSite.
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The Tablet on the Filial Correction
I said some time ago that the instinct of conventional Catholic ‘progressives’ would be to ignore the Filial Correction. It is the strange new brand of Ultramontanist liberal who is writing article after article and tweet after tweet attacking it. Compare the response of John Allen (report it as briefly as possible alongside two unrelated issues) or PrayTell (pretend it never happened) with that of the likes of Walford, Fastiggi and Goldstein, Fagioli, and Buttiglione (see this blog passim ad nauseam).
The old-style liberals have spent a life-time criticising Ultramontanism, and many — there’ll always be exceptions — have sufficient integrity (or at least shame) not to use the simple fact that it is the Pope this time who is supporting their views as a reason to dismiss objections. Indeed, the present crisis has made it clear that most at least of their long-standing opponents have, contrary to the liberal stereotype, never been robotic Ultramontanists mechanically repeating the Party Line, but are actually motivated by serious theological principles, and are therefore worthy of some degree of respect.
This week’s Tablet, the premier dead-wood media liberal Catholic publication of the English-speaking world, has published a feature article on the Correction and the Dubia by Richard R. Gaillardetz, who rejoices in the title of the Joseph Professor of Catholic Systematic Theology at Boston College. This appears to have the function of filling out and making plausible the sketchy response to the Correction The Tablet's editorial page gives in the same edition -- the editorial refers readers to Gaillardetz.
What we are witnessing today is neither a humble request for doctrinal clarification, nor a stealthily-plotted, mean-spirited assault on the Pope’s integrity. What we are witnessing is the clash of two fundamentally different understandings of how to be a faithful Catholic in the contemporary world and two different understandings of what constitutes the Church’s core mission.
For some, fidelity is ultimately measured more by formal doctrinal assent to the Church’s teaching. These Catholics believe the Church’s mission consists in offering timeless certitudes to a world lost in a sea of relativism. For others, particularly for those who find Pope Francis’ leadership so compelling, fidelity is measured more by the concrete practice of Christian discipleship. For them, the Church’s mission should primarily be directed toward responding to the questions and yearnings of humankind today.
(‘Humankind’: donchalovit?) The implicit claim that taking doctrine seriously is incompatible with ‘discipleship’ and pastoral effectiveness would, I think, have been surprising to everyone of proven discipleship from St Peter to St Maximilian Kolbe via St Francis of Assisi, but let it pass. This is the liberals’ self-understanding. If they admitted to themselves that telling people that they don’t need to be forgiven doesn't often lead them to repentance, there’s no telling what would happen.
What is interesting is that Gaillardetz is not doubting our sincerity or calling for us to be chained up in the Castel San Angelo. He is not saying that we are cruel and wicked people, or even that we victims of pathological rigidity. He seems to be suggesting that we are sincere, consistent, thoughtful, and mistaken.
Over the years The Tablet has been pretty judgemental about those it dislikes. Opposition to females serving at the Traditional Mass, for example, was denounced as misogyny. The Tablet’s opposition to the 2011 translation of the Missal and those who produced or supported it can best be described as ‘spittle-flecked’. Thanks in part no doubt to the change of Editor, when it comes today to a conflict between Ultramontanists who happen to agree with them on matters of substance, and conservatives who do not, The Tablet takes a more eirenic tone. Gaillardetz even calls the former party’s sound and fury ‘manufactured outrage’.
Those pushing the liberalising agenda on Communion for the divorced and remarried may think that Ultramontanism is their strongest card. But actually it cuts two ways. It can be relied on to get the support of senior clergy in Opus Dei, but the liberal Catholic establishment are not riding to their aid. What is even more worrying for them is the fact that, when the official wind starts blowing the other way, as it surely will at some point, Opus Dei spokesmen will without doubt find a way of finessing their position back to orthodoxy. Less flexible partisans of the agenda may find themselves looking rather exposed.
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Claudio Pierantoni answers Buttiglione
Professor Claudio Pierantoni, a signatory of the Filial Correction, addresses in an interview with Diane Montagna on LifeSiteNews the key claims of Rocco Buttiglione when the latter criticised this initiative. Piernatoni know Buttiglione well and the two have corresponded on the subject, so this is of particular interest.
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LMS to Pilgrimage to Wrexham on Saturday
ICKSP: good news from England
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Mass at St Walburge's, Preston |
The Institute of Christ the King have made a succession of very exciting announcements about their opstolate in the north east of England, historically the most Catholic part of the country.
In addition to the landmark church, the 'Dome of Home', the Church of SS Peter & Paul and St Philomena, in the Wirral, in the Diocese of Shrewsbury, which they have run since 2012 thanks to Bishop Mark Davis, they were given the magnificent Church of St Walburge's, Preston, in the Diocese of Lancaster, which boasts the tallest spire of any parish church in England, in 2014, by Bishop Michael Campbell.
In July, Bishop Campbell gave them another historic church, close to St Walburge's: the Church of St Thomas of Canterbury and the English Martyrs.
In the meantime, in June they have announced their intention of establishing a school in Preston, in buildings which are being made available by Bishop Campbell.
Also over the Summer, the Institute of Christ the King has announced the establishment of a residential 'House of Discernment', a pre-seminary establishment to encourage those who wish to consider a vocation to the Institute in a formal way, to open for business this November.
Canon Amaury Montjean explained: 'This House is open to candidates to the ICKSP, both future seminarians and oblates : they apply for one of these lifestyle within the Institute. In other words, this formation to the life of the ICKSP is a common programme for both vocations, formation to Latin Gregorian chant, spirituality, Liturgy, spirit of the ICKSP community life essentially.
'Those who formally apply to the House will spend 9 months (Nov 2017 to July 2018) for an initial formation. After which they will be accepted (or not) at the Seminary in Florence (as seminarians) for the year before their Tonsure, or join a house of the ICKSP (as oblates).'
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Some Sister Adorers with Mgr Gilles Wach, superior of the ICKSP |
Finally, it has just been announced that as part of the plans for the school, a house of the Insitute's affiliated contemplative sisters, the Sisters Adorers of the Royal Heart of Jesus Christ Sovereign Priest, will be established next door: see below for more details.
This truly astonishing progress by the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest in a short space of time shows the growing confidence of English Bishops in the Traditional Mass and of the priests who celebrate it, and the increasingly established place of both in the life of the Church in England and Wales.
On behalf of the Latin Mass Society, I would like to congratulate Mgr Gilles Wach, who has been closely involved in all the necessary discussions, and the indefatigable priests and seminarians of the Institute in England under Canon Amaury Montjean, and indeed to thank them both for their hard work in bringing these projects so far.
Much remains to be done, and those who wish to support this work financially please contact newbrighton@icrsp.org
The press release on the Sister Adorers follows.
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Only two weeks after a second church (English Martyrs) in Preston was given over to the care of the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest, the Diocese of Lancaster and the Institute are pleased to announce that the Sisters Adorers of the Royal Heart of Jesus Christ Sovereign Priest, the female branch of the Institute, have accepted Bishop Michael Campbell’s invitation to establish a House in Preston in the Diocese of Lancaster. The arrival date for the contemplative (but not enclosed) Sisters has yet to be determined, but it is hoped that the Sisters will arrive as soon as possible to set up their first UK foundation at St Augustine’s Presbytery, Avenham, Preston.
The spiritual life of the Sisters will be an invigorating support to the life of the Church in Preston, and indeed the whole Diocese of Lancaster. The Sisters’ days will be centred around prayer - Holy Mass and the Divine Office in the extraordinary form, personal prayer and Eucharistic adoration in the evening, the Rosary, etc. Punctuating this rich life of prayer are periods of manual labour and intellectual training, including instruction in Gregorian Chant, Latin, Spirituality, Philosophy, and Theology, as well as the learning of crafts such as sewing, lace-making, and the care of liturgical vestments and altar linens.
The announcement today comes as yet a further ecclesial investment into central Preston and is the fruit of a close collaboration of the Bishop of Lancaster, Rt Rev Michael G Campbell OSA and the Prior General of the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest, Monsignor Gilles Wach, over the last three years.
Bishop Campbell upon making this announcement commented: “It’s a great joy for me to have the Sisters Adorers come into the Diocese, because I think it’s a great gift, not only to have such a strong and vibrant praying presence at the heart of Preston, but especially for the young women in our Diocese to see that some young women still choose this vocation, and that it can be a joyful and beautiful way to live one’s life.”
Bishop Campbell said he anticipates “an exciting collaboration” between the Sisters and the Priests of the Institute as well as with Father John Millar, Parochial Administrator of St John XXIII, Preston in support of the mission of the Church in central Preston.
Bishop Campbell concluded: “We remain very grateful for the historic communities who have served us so well in the Diocese over many years, and yet we are also so grateful for the new life that the newer communities - like the Sisters Adorers - bring to our future life in God.”
Monsignor Gilles Wach added: “Following the beautiful and encouraging opening of a second Shrine in Preston, this invitation to our Sisters from the Bishop of Lancaster is another opportunity to continue the mission of the Institute of Christ the King within the Church. The daily prayer of the Sisters Adorers will be a great spiritual support towards the work of the Canons of the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest in the UK, and will also benefit the Diocese of Lancaster. Their religious life, centred on Eucharistic Adoration and the Consecration to the Royal Heart of Jesus will bring more graces to Preston.”
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The Correctio and dissent against Humanae Vitae
As I noted in my last post, the Correctio Filialis has continued to stimulate a level of debate which, among other things, vindicates the supposition of the signatories that the debate would benefit from a document of this kind: something fairly long, fairly technical, hard-hitting, but respectful. We have confronted both sides of the debate on Amoris laetitia with views and documentation which invite and even oblige them to increase their undersatanding of the issues.
It is hard to know how this debate looks to hitherto uncommitted Catholics. What must be evident to them is that, following the 800,000-strong 'Filial Appeal' not to change the teaching, the 'dubia' of the four Cardinals, the the open letter of Profs Finnis and Grisez, the appeal to the Cardinals of the '45 Theologians', and so on, opposition to the liberalising agenda on Holy Communion and divorced and remarried Catholics is not going away but, if anything, rising to a cresecendo.
Furthermore, this opposition is being taken increasingly seriously at extremely high levels of the Church, and it seems to have been the Correction which has brought this about: perhaps by virtue of being the last straw on the camel's back. Increasinly weightly people are being wheeled out to criticise the Correction, such as Rocco Buttiglione and Mgr Fazio of Opus Dei. Even more siginficantly, without weighing in on the debate itself, both Cardinal Müller and Cardinal Parolin (the Secretary of State, commonly regarded as the most senior person in the Church after the Pope), have suggested that what is needed is debate: not, as one might have imagined, that what is needed is the ignoring, sidelining, or punishing of those giving voice to our concerns.
Some critics of the Correction, such as Austen Ivereigh, have compared it to the campaign against Humanae vitae by theologians wanting to allow the use of contraception, in 1968. The comparison is indeed an interesting one. One the one hand, the anti-HV campaign demonstrated how a small number of intellectuals can make a huge difference to the application of official policy in the Church, given certain conditions. One of the necessary conditions is wider sympathy; another is the incapacity of Rome after Vatican II to embark on the kind of crackdown which Pope St Pius X waged against modernists in 1910.
But here is a contrast. By issuing Humanae vitae, Pope Paul VI nailed the Church's colours to the mast. He made it clear not only that the prohibition on contraception was the policy, but that it was the unchangable teaching of the Church. His teaching was merely reiterating what the Church had always taught. Amoris laetitia is a very different document, and those worried about it are defending, not attacking, the Ordinary Magisterium. The more intelligent of Amoris' defenders realise that they must insist that this has indeed not been changed. This puts them in a bind.
You cannot be criticised, ultimately, for supporting the teaching of the Church. The worst that can be said about the substance of criticisms of Amoris, therefore, is that this criticism exagerates or misunderstands what it says. That being so, the argument inevitably leads to the same conclusion as the Correction itself: there should be a formal clarification.
This is why it is so interesting that Cardinals Müller and Parolin are calling for dialogue, which for them is a simply a polite way of asking for clarification. Indeed, a formal dialogue might even provide the necessary face-saving opportunities to make a clarification politically possible, perhaps under the next Pope. Those behind the liberalising agenda know, however, that any clarification means closing the gap between what Amoris appears to allow, and the previous teaching and practice of the Church, in favour of the latter.
The reason for this is that once you get a group of serious Catholic theologians into room to talk about it, everyone has to admit that neither teaching nor disciplinary practice is open to change. The teaching on the nature of the Blessed Sacrament and the Indissolubility of Marriage is part of the Deposit of Faith. The practice in Confession of not absolving unrepentent sinners is intrinsically related to its nature as established by Divine Law. The practice of refusing public sinners communion is also a matter of Divine Law, as reiterated famously by the Pontifical Commission for the Interpretation of Legislative Texts as recently as 2000.
Ok, does anyone disagree? Would anyone like to try the experiment? Then join with the signatories of the Correction and the Dubia Cardinals in begging Pope Francis to issue a authoritative clarificatiom.
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