Chairman's Blog

29/09/2017 - 16:22

Correctio Filialis: a response to some critics

The Filial Correction published last Sunday has attracted more support than I, as a signatory, had dared to hope. Additional signatures from pastors and academics have been submitted by the score; a petition in support has been signed by more than 10,000 people and counting; and it has been reported widely in the secular as well as the Catholic press.

There has been very little in the way of substantive response to the Correction from those who support what it criticises. Here I — in a personal capacity — want to look succinctly at three of the more serious attempts to get to grips with it. This is made easier by the fact that they all make essentially the same, erroneous criticism

First, Stephen Walford writes, characteristically:

It is difficult to know where to start on this one: the hypocrisy or the risible accusations of heresy against the Holy Father. I’ll go with hypocrisy.

Hypocrisy is the state of those whose beliefs do not correspond with their words, particularly when they wish others to uphold standards in which they do not believe. Does Walford seriously imagine that the signatories are insincere? What on earth is their motivation, Mr Walford, if they don’t think their claims are even true? It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Walford does not actually believe that the signatories are hypocrites; he just likes the sound of the word. He accusation, in fact, is quite literally hypocritical, as he insincerely accuses others of making insincere accusations.

When he does get round to a substantial argument, it is that one of the quotations of Vatican I’s Pastor aeternus, in a footnote the Correctio, leaves out a bit which he personally likes. This must be very important: we all know now that the most important passages of a document are the footnotes. This omitted bit is:

…the See of St. Peter always remains unblemished by any error, in accordance with the divine promise of our Lord and Saviour.

What does Walford imagine this passage means? Obviously, it is related to the doctrine of Papal Infallibility: ‘infallibility’ just means ‘unblemished by any errors’. So, does Pastor aeternus want us to think, like Rex in Brideshead Revisited, that when the Pope says ‘It’s raining’ it must be, even if when you look out of the window it is evident that it isn’t? No, Pastor aeternus is precisely the document which sets out the extremely limited circumstances in which one may say of the words of a Pope: ‘that statement is protected by the gift of infallibility’.

Do these circumstances cover a pope’s private letter, say to the Bishops of Buenos Aires, which is subsequently leaked to the press? Do they include a pope’s agreement, perhaps a tacit one, to the printing of something, say guidelines for the application of Amoris laetitia composed by the Bishops of Malta, in the Vatican’s newspaper? No, Mr Walford, these are not infallible acts of the Petrine teaching office; they are not acts of the Petrine teaching office at all.

Walford’s key mistake, then, is to ignore the central claim of the Correctio, and to focus on something the Correctio goes out of its way not to say. The real claim is: the Pope has left us little doubt about how he wants us to understand and apply Amoris, and this understanding is in the last analysis incompatible with the Faith. What Walford would like it to be saying is that Amoris is unambiguously erroneous in itself.

Certain passages of Amoris do, perhaps, point in a problematic direction, but for myself I was ready to read them in light of the preceding teaching of the Church — anyone who doubts this can read the blog posts I composed in the immediate aftermath of its publication. Heck, I even criticised Steve Skojek over it. Now it’s me who is the idiot, along with everyone else who tried to give it the benefit of the doubt. What is key here, however, is not the precise wording of Amoris, but the way Pope Francis has been indicating, non-magisterially, that it should be understood.

It is this same error of Walford’s which is repeated by Robert Fastiggi and Dawn Eden Goldstein. They have found a discrepancy between the official Latin text and the English translation, and claim that the authors of the Correctio were led astray by this. Well, that is a potentially interesting point, though as a matter of fact many signatories’ first languages are those in which, according to Fastiggi and Goldstein, Amoris got a better translation. Furthermore, the difference it makes does not appear to make any substantive difference to the meaning of the passage.

However, I’m not going to go into all the details because it is irrelevant. It is not that we are saying that the text of Amoris cannot be bent into some kind of orthodoxy. What we are saying is that it has become clear that orthodoxy is not what Pope Francis wants us to find there.

Finally, there is Jacob Wood. Much of his article is accurate and helpful. What is less so is in claiming that the Correction causes scandal. It should be obvious to anyone who loves the Church that it would be far more scandalous if a pope favoured error and faithful Catholics all remained silent. I hardly think this point needs to be laboured.

But his final verdict on the Correctio appears to be this:

None of the passages of Amoris Laetitia cited by the correction explicitly denies that a person who knowingly and willingly commits grave evil cuts himself or herself off from God’s grace.

Having made the necessary distinction between the Pope proposing heresy explicitly and promoting it, Wood fails to consider the (personal) acts of Pope Francis, many listed in the Correctio, which do favour this idea. But that is what the Correctio is ultimately about.

As noted, the substantive responses to the Correctio are, so far, seriously lacking in substance. There is a reason for this, of course. Not only is their case weak, but the very act of engaging in detailed argument about the substantive issues leads the discussion in a direction in which, it would seem, Pope Francis does not want it to go. He could have cleared up the ‘confusion’ at any time by issuing an magisterial statement, but there is value in the ambiguity since it allows a variety of interpretations while some can still claim — correctly — that nothing contrary to the Faith has been formally promulgated. As some of his defenders like to say, a dialogue, answering the Dubai for example, would be a ‘trap’. In a sense, any clarification would be a reassertion of the primacy of theological clarity, the magisterium, and rules.

But that position, or refusing to clarify, is crumbling now. We have now had two Cardinals, Müller and the Secretary of Sate, Cardinal Parolin, calling for a serious engagement between the Vatican and critics such as the signatories and the ‘dubia’ Cardinals. Perhaps, just perhaps, are approaching the end game.

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26/09/2017 - 10:56

The mainstream media on the Correctio Filialis

I agreed to be spokesman or media contact for the Correctio Filialis I didn't realise quite was I was letting myself in for. I've now lost count of the number of telephone and email mini-interviews I've done, and I don't have time to keep track on the number of reports online which have resulted from these.

This could have been a nightmare, but it's not at all. The journalists have been polite and professional. (Associated Press was a teeny bit naughty breaking the media embargo, but it was only by an hour or two.) And all things considered, we are getting amazingly favourable coverage in Catholic and non-Catholic sources.

The New York Times and the Daily Mail, which both picked up the AP material, took the fairly obvious (to them) line that the Pope was being nice to people and that we want to take the sweeties away from the children - or something like that. (A Guardian comment piece says the same thing.) They paid us the incomparable compliment, however, of reporting us, and indeed of doing so at some length and with a degree of prominence, and the articles are hardly hatchet-jobs. The story of the 'Pope vs. conservative critics' has become part of the media narrative about Pope Francis, so it goes down without obstruction. But critical distance between the liberal media and what we might call the 'reforming agenda' in the Church seems to have opened up nevertheless, thanks no doubt to stories such as about Professor Seifert losing his job over criticisms Amoris laetitia. The liberals in the Church are less and less recognisable as such; the conservatives are clearly now the underdogs.

So now we have a story from CNN which is really very balanced, even favourable to us.

In the meantime, Catholic outlets seem to be divided between those who want to report the story in an objective or favourable way, who find themselves doing multiple stories as the news develops (Catholic Herald here and here, Lifesite here, here, here, etc.), and those who wish to play it down or ignore it completely. The problem for the latter is that it is too late: the mainstream media have already picked it up.

It's no fun ignoring something on one's own. And it doesn't have the desired effect, either.

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25/09/2017 - 18:50

Reactions to the Filial Correction

Please note that academics and pastors who wish to are invited to apply to join the official list of signatories through a button on the website here (scroll down).

Everyone can sign the petition of support here.

I've been watching the reaction to the Filial Correction on the media - though I've certainly not read all of it - and the Catholic reaction in favour and against are both very interesting.

The reaction in favour has been overwhelming. At the time of writing the petition in support of the document has over 4,000 names, despite being very much an afterthought and not being integrated into the publicity.

But more important has been the tone of responses, and the range of people who have responded positively. Over the last forty years and more the 'conservative' end of the theological debate has been riven by disagreement about how bad things really are, and how strongly criticisms should be expressed. It sometimes seemed that every initiative by a conservative group would be denounced, simultaneously but by different people, as being excessively aggressive and as making too many concessions to liberalism: as being too strong and too weak. Differences of opinion on exactly how to protest about problems are inevitable, but these disagreements have at times become so violent as to cripple conservatives' ability to act at all.

This is not happening at all with the Correctio Filialis. Not everyone thinks that the wording and the general approach is perfect - of course not - but we are not being attacked by fellow-conservatives and traditionalists. I think this is extremely significant. A consensus has formed among those serious about the Faith that things have reached a point where such action is at least reasonable, and derives from sincere love of the Church and reasonably well-informed thinking about the theological issues. For a vast number of conservative Catholics, the response has been relief: someone at last has said it.

So who is opposing us? I think the long-established 'liberal' side of the argument on theological issues would be content to ignore us. There is no reference to the Catholic story of the day, on prominent display in the Daily Mail, the New York Times, The Times, and various other places, on the PrayTell blog at the time of writing. A journalist from The Tablet spoke to me today, but I fancy the result will simply be a short news item.

No, it is the strange new phenomenon of hyper-ultramontanist Francis-partizans who have taken up the fight. They are helpfully gathered together in a National Catholic Reporter article. They seem very worked up, and have developed a sort of all-purpose invective, which can be applied to any topic: the people they don't like are 'hypocrites', aren't very grand and well-connected, and are few in number. As we philosophers say, an argument that can prove too much, ends up proving nothing at all.

Search that article from end to end and you won't find a single objection to the content of the document. And here's something else. The writer of the article, Joshua J. McElwee, not only has no reaction to these spluttering accusations, in his article, from a supporter of the Correctio Filialis, but in preparing it he never took the first step in trying to get one. I know this because that step would be writing to me, at the email address included in the press release as the media contact. I have spent all of today and much of yesterday on the phone to or writing emails to journalists: the Associated Press, LifeSite, radio journalists from Poland, journalists in Rome, CNN, The Tablet, you name it. But from Joshua J. McElwee I have not heard a peep. He didn't want to hear the other side of the story. He just wanted to put together a few quotes from a tiny clique of chums. This isn't journalism, this is the Party Line.

On the one hand, they are desperate to make little of us: they don't want to quote us, they think we are insignificant, it's just a few people, move along there, there's nothing to see. On the other hand, they can't actually bear to look away. They can't stop tweeting and writing about it. We represent a totally insignificant threat that is absolutely terrifying and must be crushed at all costs.

To be fair to them, I think they may have an insight into the affair which the conventional liberals lack. I rather think we really are more significant than our numbers and our academic standing might suggest. So much so, in fact, that the Vatican itself has gone to the trouble of blocking access to the Correction Filialis website from Vatican computers, which appears rather symbolic, if not ludicrous.

In that enormous silence, tiny and unafraid,
Comes up along a winding road the noise of the Crusade...

(Chesterton)

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23/09/2017 - 23:30

With profound grief... A filial correction.

St Catherine of Siena before Pope Gregory XI

With profound grief, but moved by fidelity to our Lord Jesus Christ, by love for the Church and for the papacy, and by filial devotion toward yourself, we are compelled to address a correction to Your Holiness on account of the propagation of heresies effected by the apostolic exhortation Amoris laetitia and by other words, deeds and omissions of Your Holiness.

We are permitted to issue this correction by natural law, by the law of Christ, and by the law of the Church, which three things Your Holiness has been appointed by divine providence to guard.

By natural law: for as subjects have by nature a duty to obey their superiors in all lawful things, so they have a right to be governed according to law, and therefore to insist, where need be, that their superiors so govern.

By the law of Christ: for His Spirit inspired the apostle Paul to rebuke Peter in public when the latter did not act according to the truth of the gospel (Gal. 2). St Thomas Aquinas notes that this public rebuke from a subject to a superior was licit on account of the imminent danger of scandal concerning the faith (Summa Theologiae 2a 2ae, 33, 4 ad 2), and ‘the gloss of St Augustine’ adds that on this occasion, “Peter gave an example to superiors, that if at any time they should happen to stray from the straight path, they should not disdain to be reproved by their subjects” (ibid.).

The law of the Church also constrains us, since it states that “Christ’s faithful . . . have the right, indeed at times the duty, in keeping with their knowledge, competence, and position, to manifest to the sacred pastors their views on matters which concern the good of the Church” (Code of Canon Law 212:2-3; Code of Canons of Oriental Churches 15:3).

I am a signatory of the document which begins with these words, and also its spokesman. You can read the full text on Rorate Caeli, and (I hope) on a specially made website, http://correctiofilialis.com/ See also 1Peter5's commentary.

The document is signed by 62 people, Catholic academics and pastors, from 20 countries. It expresses, in technical theological language, the concern that, while Amoris laetitia itself may be open to an interpretation in line with the previous teaching of the Church, various informal indications, which appear to be favoured by Pope Francis himself, point to an interpretation not in line with that teaching.

Either the new view is wrong, or the old one is. There has in fact been no attempt to promulgate the new view magisterially - that is from the Holy Father himself, clearly, and in an authoritative format, such as a formal document - since Amoris laetitia itself. It would seem, in any case, that such an attempt could not be successful, in the sense of creating an obligation on Catholics to assent to this new view, because the old view expressed the Ordinary Magisterium, based on Scripture, and this teaching cannot be changed. In short, it seems to me that the new view which has been suggested and insinuated is incompatible with the Faith.

That does not mean that the Pope is a heretic. There is a wide gap between appearing to favour a view which is objectively contrary to the faith, and being a heretic, one part of which is the knowledge and intentions of the person concerned, and another part of which is the judgement of that person by a competent superior. We cannot ascertain the former, and as for the latter, in the law of the Church, the Pope has no superior. Judgment of the Pope's culpability or personal state has absolutely no place in this project.

What we can do, and are doing, is simply pointing out that the view being insinuated is not the Catholic faith, as we are able to understand it. In such a case, where the stakes are so high, it seems to us an obligation to discharge our consciences to the Holy Father himself, privately, as we did a month and more ago. And then, in the absence of a response, to manifest our concerns to the Catholic public at large.

This does not mean that I think I am or the petitioners as a group are infallible. It just means that I feel I must manifest my view. It is for those with teaching authority to address our concerns, to make clear what is unclear, and to show us, if necessary, where we have gone wrong. Any document like this, within the Church, is designed to stimulate the exercise of the magisterium, not to undermine or replace it.

Posted on the Feast of Our Lady of Ransom, and of Walsingham.
St Catherine of Siena, pray for us.

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23/09/2017 - 19:12

LMS Pilgrimage to Glastonbury

This year I was able to get to the Latin Mass Society's longstanding pilgrimage to Glastonbury, one of the ancient holy places of Europe. It generally takes place on the first Saturday of September.

A Sung Mass was celebrated by Fr Philip Thomas. By coincidence, it has been announced that another priest of Clifton who has done much for the Traditional Mass, Fr Bede Rowe, will be taking over as Parish Priest of Glastonbury.

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20/09/2017 - 18:48

Cardinal Sarah's proposed reform of the Traditional Mass

In addressing the Summorum Pontificum Pilgrimage to Rome last weekend, with many very fine and important things to say, on the occasion of the 10th Anniversary of Summorum Pontificum, Cardinal Sarah acknowledged the response to his earlier remarks on the subject of ‘reconciling’ the Ordinary and the Extraordinary Forms of the Roman Rite.

In July I spoke of a possible future reconciliation between the two forms of the Roman rite. Some have interpreted this expression of personal opinion as the announcement of a programme that would end up in the future imposition of a hybrid rite which would bring about a compromise that would leave everybody unhappy and would abolish the usus antiquior by stealth, as it were. This interpretation is absolutely not what I intended. What I do wish to do is to encourage further thought and study on these questions in peace and tranquillity and in a spirit of prayerful discernment. There are improvements which can be made to both forms of the Roman rite in use today, and both forms can contribute to this in due course.

Cardinal Sarah clearly wants to reassure - indeed, to calm down - Catholics attached to the Extraordinary Form, but he doesn't actually abandon his project. The reconciliation he desires should, however, only come about after careful study, and with due consideration for the sensitivities of Catholics attached to the Extraordinary Form.

One is tempted to say: ‘In others words, PANIC!!’ However I don’t actually think that is necessary. Cardinal Sarah is entitled to his views and his call for a debate is welcome. The practical and political obstacles to liturgical reform are currently so overwhelming that we really can have this debate in a calm state of mind - it is for the foreseeable future purely academic.

In any case, I intend here to respond to His Eminence’s call for a calm and reasoned discussion, taking my start from his own example of the possible development of the Extraordinary Form:

the older missal may well profit from the addition of ferial Masses in Advent and the expansion of its lectionary on ferias.

This is interesting both in itself and because it may represent a development of his thinking: having seen the arguments about the possibility of using the reformed Lectionary as a whole in the EF from Catholics attached to the Extraordinary Form, which naturally focused on the Sunday cycle, he wants to focus just on the Ferial cycle. So we now need to think about what to say about that.

The FIUV Position Paper on the Lectionary does discuss the question of ferial cycles outside Lent. One aspect of the question is the fact that prior to the 13th century Missale Romano-Seraphicum, upon which later editions of the Roman Missal have been based, there were ferial cycles outside Lent, as well as the Lenten ferial Masses which it did include. Versions of these survived even longer in non-Roman, Latin Missals. Unlike the Lenten cycle, however, they were not day-by-day sets of extra readings, but only two or three days a week, making use of parallel pericopes to the previous Sunday.

This makes sense, because the Orations at ferial Masses outside Lent are the same as those of the previous Sunday. So for the readings and prayers to hang together, the readings were commonly simply different versions of the same gospel miracle or parable or whatever.

It is worth pausing to ask why the Franciscans who created the Missale Romano-Seraphicum, based on the liturgy of Papal court but adapted to their own needs, did not include the non-Lenten ferial cycles of readings. They haven’t left an explanation, but it is not difficult to imagine them deciding that the significant extra size of Missal and therefore the expense involved was not worth it, because these ferial readings were not going to be used very much. This was so because the weekdays not used up by the abundant sanctoral cycle of the Roman Rite were so often used for Votive Masses, including the Mass for the Dead. These considerations are no less applicable today than they were in the 13th century.

Now making the case for the restoration of ancient ferial cycles is a very different matter from making the case for the use, in the EF, of the reformed Lectionary. I assume Cardinal Sarah has the latter in mind. Indeed, referring to ‘ferial Masses’ in Advent suggests that it is not just the readings, but the orations also which he has in view: we are talking, then, about whole Mass ‘formularies’: introit, collect, epistle, gradual (no alleluia in Advent on ferial days), gospel, offertory, secret, communion antiphon and postcommunion prayer. (The EF has such ferial Masses for Lent.) This proposal raises a number of additional issues.

The first question is where all these texts are going to come from. If you open the 1970 Missal with a view to pulling out the relevant texts for use in the EF you will find that they are not all there, and the closest equivalents does not necessarily have the same function. The OF doesn’t have a secret prayer, for example. The 1970 Missal doesn’t include graduals, although you can find them in the 1974 Graduale Romanum, as options if there is to be something sung between the Epistle and Gospel: they would never appear in a non-sung OF Mass. These, and the Scripture passages for the lections, have been chosen and spread through the liturgical year in a way completely different from the way it is done in the EF, and since the proposal is to use this method of selection only for Advent, it could have some odd consequences in terms of repetitions of texts and things being left out.

In short, the creation of a set of Advent ferial Masses for the EF using resources from the OF would be a lot more complicated and messy than one might at first imagine. Not only would the Ordinary Prayers of the Mass be in tension with the Proper Prayers and readings, but insofar as the Propers included ancient texts from the Graduale Romanum and other sources, the propers would be in tension with each other.

The tensions would arise in part from differences of theme, but the most serious problem is the consistent difference of attitude or tone between the EF and the OF, which is reflected in the propers as well as in the Ordinary. Anyone in any doubt about this needs to read the research on the subject, notably that of Lauren Pristas. This difference will be particularly acute in Advent because it is - at least in the EF - a penitential season. References to penance, the mortification of the flesh, and repentance, are abundant in the propers of the EF Sundays of Advent, but are scarcely to be found in the OF anywhere. Archbishop Bugnini thought that they were too ‘negative’. He also removed almost every reference to grace. Yoking OF propers to the Ordinary Prayers of the EF would produce a liturgy with a split personality.

Cardinal Sarah is talking about reconciliation and mutual enrichment. This proposal seems a way not of lessening the differences between the EF and the OF, however, but forcing them into battle with each other within a single liturgical celebration. As I noted before, the way to establish liturgical harmony is to let each thing be what it is, not to force changes on them contrary to their own inner logic.

I will of course leave the assessment of Cardinal Sarah’s proposals to change the OF to others.

I have, in this post, referred to ‘Catholics attached to the Extraordinary Form’, since it is necessary to pick them out as a group within the Church with a particular interest in these matters, and to an extent with common characteristics, notably in their preferences and needs. I think it is obvious that if we are going to talk about them at all - and it would clearly be unjust to pretend that they do not exist and have no rights or interests - we need a way of doing so in less than six words or 14 syllables. Pace Cardinal Sarah, I think referring to ‘Traditional Catholics’ serves the job without implying anything about them being in a ghetto. Those who think that Traditional Catholics are, or should be, in a ghetto, should just stop thinking that.

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18/09/2017 - 10:10

New Council elected by Una Voce International

I attended the 'closed' or business meeting of Una Voce International - the Foederatio Internationalis Una Voce, FIUV - which takes place every two years and elects (or re-elects) the organisation's officers and Council.

Like most voluntary organisations, the FIUV is never overwhelmed by people wanting to take on positions of responsibility. We are very grateful to Felipe Alanis Suarez (from Mexico) for agreeing to do another term as President, and to Monika Rheinsmitt for carrying on as Treasurer. I agreed to be Secretary, a post I have not undertaken before. (I was Treasurer 2013-'15.)

Apart from the usual and, often in their most interesting aspects, confidential contact with the Curia, and the development of the organisation (such as the admission of new members), the big news of this year's General Assembly is the publication of the history of the FIUV by Leo Darroch, from the beginning (1965) up to the resignation of Michael Davies as President in 2002. It is a substantial work and I'll be writing reviews of it in various formats soon: buy it from the LMS bookshop here.

Here is the full list of Officers an pd Council members of the FIUVl

President: Felipe Alanís Suárez (Una Voce México)

President d'Honneur: Jacques Dhaussy (Una Voce France)

Vice Presidents: Patrick Banken (Una Voce France)

Jack Oostveen (Ecclesia Dei Delft, The Netherlands)

Secretary: Joseph Shaw (Latin Mass Society, England and Wales)

Treasurer: Monika Rheinschmitt (Pro Missa Tridentina, Germany)

Councillors:
Oleg-Michael Martynov (Una Voce Russia)
Jarosław Syrkiewicz (Una Voce Polonia)
Derik Castillo (Una Voce México)
Andris Amolins (Una Voce Latvija)

Eduardo Colón (Una Voce Puerto Rico)
Fabio Marino (Una Voce Italia)

Egons Morales Piña (Una Voce Casablanca, Chile)

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12/09/2017 - 10:00

Photos from Walsingham, Part 3

After Mass in the Reconciliation Chapel, we walked in procession down the Holy Mile, the last mile to the site of the Medieval shrine, destroyed at the Reformation.

The remains of Walsingham Priory

Venerating the processional statue

On Monday morning, some of us returned to the Catholic Shrine for a Sung Mass in the tiny Slipper Chapel.

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11/09/2017 - 10:00

Photos from Walsingham, Part 2

On Saturday, we stop at the ruins of Castle Acre Priory, and say the De Profundis.

On Saturday evening, at our evening stop of Great Massingham, we were visited by Bishop Alan Hopes, who is of course the lcoal Ordinary: Bishop of East Anglia.