Places that should be Catholic: Holy Isle and the Cave of St. Molaise; Arran, Scotland

In Scotland's Firth of Clyde, between the Kintyre Peninsula and mainland Scotland, lays the small, quiet island known as Arran. Arran is, in my opinion, one of the most beautiful places in the world. I was fortunate enough to have been able to visit it and bike around the island back in 1998, an experience I shall never forget. It's winding country lanes, lonely castles and beautiful seascapes are forever etched in my memory as the  loveliest places in a country that already abounds with loveliness.

Slightly off the east coast of Arran sits an even smaller island, which locals simply call the Holy Isle. The tiny island is only 1.9 miles around and can easily be passed over as just another one of western Scotland's thousands of tiny islands. Holy Isle, however, was once the home of one of Scotland's early saints, St. Molaise of Leighlin, also known as St. Laisren or St. Laserian.

St. Molaise was an Irish monk of Iona; details of his early life are non-existent but it is possible that he was a disciple of St. Columba. He most certainly met Pope St. Gregory the Great, for he was ordained bishop by the great pope during a trip to Rome sometime around 600 and later returned to Iona as Gregory's legate to the foundling Scottish churches, supporting the Roman doctrine on images against certain Celts who had iconoclastic tendencies. He also argued for the Roman calculation of Easter against the Celtic practice.

Not much is known of the life of St. Molaise. He spent much of his time as a hermit on the Holy Isle, praying in a cave on the hill of Mullach Mòr. He is the subject of the early Celtic tale the Vision of Laisren, one of the first pieces of Christian Scottish literature. In this tale St. Molaise (called Laisren or Laserian) is terrified by a vision of hell in order that he might return and warn his brother monks who were living in half-hearted obedience to their rule. St. Molaise died in 639 and his feast day is April 18th. According to a bizarre legend of questionable authenticity, his death came as the result of plucking out some sort of cursed hair from the eyebrow of St. Sillán. This hair had the strange property that anyone who looked upon in the morning it would die; having plucked it and looked upon it in the morning, Molaise immediately died. This legend has all the fantasy and tragedy of the classic Irish-Celtic sagas (the Death of Diarmid, for example).

Regardless of the historicity of the legends surrounding St. Molaise, he was clearly an important individual in the development of Christianity in Scotland. As a bishop ordained by St. Gregory who argued in favor of the Roman practices, and as a possible convert or disciple of Columba, he is an important link between the primitive foundation of the Scottish church and the later episcopal establishment we read about in Bede.

Thus, it is especially sorrowful that the Holy Isle, and the hermit cave of St. Molaise, have passed into the possession of the pagans. This island and the cave where St. Molaise passed countless nights of lonely penance is now in the hands of the Samyé Ling Buddhist Community. The Buddhists have set up a "Centre for World Peace and Health on the island where they host retreats initiating people into Tibetan Buddhist meditation techniques. The road up the island off the ferry is decorated with Tibetan prayer flags and stupas.

Nor has the cave of St. Molaise been spared from being decorated by the heathens. This sacred spot is now decorated with Tibertan Buddhist prayer flags, ostensibly to honor St, Molaise (as if the prayers of the saint and the meditations of the Buddhists have anything in common), but in my opinion they actually insult the saint and offend God in this.

The cave of St. Molaise on Holy Isle, defiled by the prayer flags of Tibetan Buddhists

This brings up an interesting question - to what degree, if any, does it honor Christ when His saints are honored by pagans? Some, upon hearing this story, may say that it does us honor that even the pagans acknowledge the holiness of one of our saints; should we not rejoice at this? I disagree; I believe it is offensive to the saints when they are honored by pagans in the manner described above.

There are two ways a non-believer can attempt to honor a saint; one is by honoring something in the saint that they believe approximates to their own false religion; the other is by being so impressed with the saints devotion to the Catholic religion that they give a reluctant honor in spite of the fact that the saint is Catholic and they are not. In the first case, the saint is honored not because he is a Catholic but because he is (erroneously) believed to approximate to a pagan; in the second case, he is honored as a Catholic. I believe that the first type of "honor" is offensive to God and to the saint while the second does justice to the saint. Some examples are in order.

Let's take St. Clare. She is often honored by atheist feminists. These feminists honor her, not because she was a devoted, Catholic saint who loved God, but because she disobeyed her father's wishes in a patriarchal society and blazed a trail for feminist revolt by assuming a role of leadership in a world dominated by men. Obviously, this view is skewered, but the point is that they do not honor Clare because she is Catholic; they honor her because they believe that she has something in common with them - that she is a sort of proto-feminist, in whom modern feminists can find something to look up to. Of course, Clare's life and teachings are obscured and twisted to fit this mold, but this necessarily happens when non-Catholics attempt to honor Catholic saints for something other than their Catholicity. Clare is here not being honored as a Catholic, but as some sort of feminazi. This is an example of the first way that a non-believer can honor a Catholic saint, and I believe this sort of "honor" does not truly honor the saint and is offensive to God, because it disregards what is most important about that saint (their identity as a Catholic) and misconstrues what that saint's life revolved around. Clare might have been a powerful woman leader, but she would have had nothing to do with modern feminism had she been acquainted with it.

If we took our first example from Clare, let us take our second example from St. Francis. Now I will speak of the second manner in which a non-Catholic or pagan can honor a saint, and in this manner they can do him justice. Let us recall Francis' memorable journey to the holy land and his conference with the Sultan of Egypt in the Muslim camp outside Damietta. There is exposition of the faith and willingness to die for it so astounded the Sultan that he gave Francis a grudging respect and honor. The Little Flowers of St. Francis, which embellish the story somewhat, relate it this way:

St Francis standing before him, inspired by the Holy Spirit, preached most divinely the faith of Christ; and to prove the truth of what he said, professed himself ready to enter into the fire. Now the Sultan began to feel a great devotion towards him, both because of the constancy of his faith, and because he despised the things of this world (for he had refused to accept any of the presents which he had offered to him), and also because of his ardent wish to suffer martyrdom. From that moment he listened to him willingly, and begged him to come back often, giving both him and his companions leave to preach wheresoever they pleased; he likewise gave them a token of his protection, which would preserve them from all molestation (XXIV).

In this case the Sultan honors Francis precisely because of what is most important about him - his identity as a Catholic; he marvels and honors him "because of the constancy of his faith." Unlike the example above of the feminists honoring Clare, here Francis is honored by a non-Catholic not in spite of his Catholicism, but because he is such an exceptional Catholic.

Note, too, that the response of the Sultan is different. He does not choose to honor Francis with the implements of Muslim worship; on the contrary, he encourages the spread of Christianity and later in the story even professes a wish that he could convert! He honors Francis because he is a Catholic and honors him in a way that Francis would approve of. He does not honor Francis because Francis in any way approximates to anything found in Islam; he honors Francis because Francis is so unlike what he has known in Islam.

We could also cite, in this vein, the tale of Naaman the Syrian, who though a pagan, marvels at the power of Elisha to heal him. He honors Elisha by asking for earth from Israel so that he can honor the true God and expresses sorrow that he must still participate in the external worship of the state gods of Syria. He says:

"Let me, your servant, be given as much earth as a pair of mules can carry, for your servant will never again make burnt offerings and sacrifices to any other god but the LORD. But may the LORD forgive your servant for this one thing: When my master enters the temple of Rimmon to bow down and he is leaning on my arm and I have to bow there also—when I bow down in the temple of Rimmon, may the LORD forgive your servant for this” (2 Kings 5:17-18).

Again, Naaman honors Elisha not because Elisha reminds him of something good in his own paganism, but because Elisha has demonstrated the power of the true God where the pagan gods have been dumb. It is because the God of Israel is so unlike Rimmon that Naaman marvels.

So, how are we to understand the prayer flags at the cave of St. Molaise? I believe this is a case of the first example, where the pagans are honoring St. Molaise, not because they appreciate him as a Catholic saint who loved our Lord Jesus Christ deeply, but because they see in him a "holy man" in whom they think to find some approximation to their own tradition of contemplation and meditation. In Molaise the hermit they see (errantly) a proto-Buddhist, and as such they honor him not as a Catholic but with the implements of their own false religion.

I think this misconstrues the life and work of St. Molaise, does no honor to the saint and is offensive to God. I don't know how this cave and island came into the possession of the Samyé Ling Buddhist Community. I do not know why the Catholic Church in Scotland could not get a hold of it; probably because the Catholic Church in Scotland is too busy just trying to stay in existence. It is a tragedy. This place should be a Catholic shrine in the hands of Catholics. If nothing else, some Catholic zealot should go there and tear those prayer flags down, even as Gideon tore down the altar of Baal in his village. Will not someone rid Holy Isle of these troublesome prayer flags?

Pray for the restoration of Holy Isle and the cave of St. Molaise to the Catholic Church! St. Molaise, ora pro nobis!

Related Article: St. Boniface and the Zeal of Gideon

Requiescat in Pace, Dr. Warren Carroll

Dr. Warren Carrol, died. July 17th, 2011. No further information except that he has passed away.

Oprah and the New Age

Oprah Winfrey is a well known proponent of mystical, New Age ideologies. There is nothing new about celebrities being involved in New Age mysticism, but in Oprah's case it is especially dangerous because she is such a well-respected figure, commanding the admiration and I would even say obedience of millions around the world.

I have spoken before on the tragedy of Oprah's falling away from the Christian faith due to a tragic but simple misunderstanding of the phrase "I am a jealous God" from the Old Testament; at least, this is the reason she herself cites for her apostasy. But how did she go from baptist skeptic to New Age ideologue, and what exactly are her current New Age connections?

According to Oprah, this transition happened because of a book entitled Discover the Power Within You by "Unity" minister Eric Butterworth. The Unity Church movement, like the Mormons and the Jehovah's Witnesses, uses your standard Christian vocabulary - God, Christ, the Bible, etc. - but means things totally different by these terms than orthodox Catholics or even conservative Christians would understand by them. For example, "Christ" means the divinity in all people; the historical Jesus is a great teacher who exemplifies the full expression of what it means to discover the "Christ" within you. Prayer is seen as a rejection of negative energy, and so on and so forth.

Oprah, upon reading this book, said, "This book changed my perspective on life and religion. Eric Butterworth teaches that God isn't "up there." He exists inside each one of us, and it's up to us to seek the divine within." This universal immanence of God within all of us, excluding His transcendence or any moral demands upon the human subject of God's indwelling, inform all of Oprah's spirituality. 

She has used her fame and the forum of her television program to promote this spiritual vision; in fact, if one takes a topical look at all of the guests on her show over the years, it could be argued that the majority of them have been dedicated to promoting this New Age vision. Take the example of Gary Zukav. Zukav was a physicist who began delving into New Age spirituality in the 1980's, culminating in his best selling book The Seat of the Soul (1989), which taught that the human being was evolving to a point where the existence of the soul would be known and felt empirically - that just as humans evolved to use reason, so they would evolve, and were evolving, to master the powers of the soul. The utilitarian "use" of the souls powers would be as natural as the use of sight or speech. Zukav claimed to be able to possess this ability and taught that others could as well through "moving beyond the limitations of the five senses." 

Zukav was first featured on Oprah in 1998 and since then has appeared on her show 35 times, which is more than any other guest. Oprah says Zukav's book is her favorite book of all time "except the Bible"; by her own admission, Oprah keeps a copy of this book by her bedside. Another favorite New Age author of Oprah is Eckhart Tolle. Oprah summarized Tolle's teaching as about religious experience primarily, "God is a feeling experience and not a believing experience. If your religion is a believing experience, then that's not truly God." (source). In her insistence on religious experience over objective religious fulfillment in any beatific vision, and her belief in universal divine immanence in all humanity, Oprah is nothing other than a New Age modernist.

With her audience of 22 million, mostly female, adherents, Oprah's propagation of these views has tremendous consequences. Christianity Today once called her one of "America's most influential spiritual leaders" (source). For most of you, this is old news; but is important to know, especially if you know a Christian friend who is taken by Oprah. She is a false messiah and a very dangerous priestess of modernism.

Related: Oprah and the Big Questions of Life

Austria's "Call to Disobedience"

Latest news out of the troubled land of Austria: 300 out of Austria's 4,200 priests have pledged to take part in an effort known as the "Call to Disobedience", as reported by Catholic Culture and the National Catholic Reporter. Here is what the signatories to the "Call to Disobedience" website are pledging:

•to pray for Church reform at every liturgy, since “in the presence of God there is freedom of speech”

•not to deny the Holy Eucharist to “believers of good will,” including non-Catholic Christians and those who have remarried outside the Church

•to avoid offering Mass more than once on Sundays and holy days and to avoid making use of visiting priests--instead holding a “self-designed” Liturgy of the Word

•to describe such a Liturgy of the Word with the distribution of Holy Communion as a “priestless Eucharistic celebration”; “thus we fulfill the Sunday obligation in a time of priest shortage”

•to “ignore” canonical norms that restrict the preaching of the homily to clergy

•to oppose parish mergers, insisting instead that each parish have its own individual leader, “whether man or woman”

•to “use every opportunity to speak out openly in favor of the admission of the married and of women to the priesthood”

Cardinal Schönborn of Vienna weighed in on this in a July 7 letter, saying, "This open call to disobedience shocked me...Christian obedience is a school of freedom; it is about the concrete translation into life of what we pray in every Our Father, when we ask the Father that His will be done in heaven and on earth … This willingness is made concrete in religious obedience to the Pope and bishops.” He went on to say that those who persist in disobedience would do better to simply leave the Church altogether.

When I first heard about this and read the Cardinal's statements, one thought crossed my mind: There are only seven dioceses in Austria, and Vienna is by far the largest. Schönborn has been Archbishop of Vienna since 1995, but he was an Auxiliary Bishop in 1991 - that's 20 years in this Archdiocese. There is a good chance that Schönborn personally ordained many of these 300 dissenters. What kind of formation did they have? And if they had poor formation (which it seems evident they did), how did the Cardinal let  them go on for 20 years without trying to rectify the problem? Did this Cardinal, who in the wake of the sex abuse crisis suggested there needed to be "unflinching examination" in the "issue of priest's training" himself fail to recognize the seeds of dissent in these priests? Ths sort of dissent does not just come out of nowhere, though the "shocked" disposition of Cardinal Schönborn would seem to suggest that he at least may think it does. If 300 priests in your diocese suddenly rise up in formal, united dissent, the Ordinary of the diocese who probably ordained a lot of these guys is certainly not blameless.

If he knew this sort of dissent was brewing in his prebyterate, he was negligent in not addressing it. If on the other hand, if he has been there for 20 years and really had no clue this was the temperament of his priests, then he demonstrates an exceptional degree of cluelessness. I grant it may not be so simple; after all, being a bishop in this day and age is a very complex thing, something a layman like me could not possibly understand.

Furthermore, if Cardinal Schönborn insists on personally celebrating Masses like  this and explicitly approves functions like this one, can he really be surprised that he reaps the fruits of disobedience? When he sets this tone for his diocese, on what grounds is he so "shocked"?

Since my co-blogger at large, the illustrious Anselm, lives in the great land of Austria, I would be more than interested to hear is take on this.

Related: The controversy over Cardinal Schonborn's balloon Mass

Reliability of the Fathers (part 3 of 7)

Continuing this long and in depth series on the reliability of the Church Fathers as guides to Christian belief and practice, we return to the objections of my scholarly Protestant interlocutor, who had argued that the Fathers were an unreliable source for determining true doctrine, essentially saying that modern, critical biblical scholarship should be preferred before the testimony of the Christians of the first four centuries. He had many objections, the first on the allegation that the Greek and Latin Fathers were "insensitive" to different "cultural horizons" and could not possibly understand the Jewish Scriptures correctly (refuted here) and the argument that the transition from a Jewish Church to a Gentile Church also caused a transition in the Church's theology further away from biblical principles (refuted here).

The next fact the interlocutor cites in favor of his view is the following:

The evolution of Christianity as a progressive and subversive challenge to social structures into Christianity as an upholder of said social structures.

Thus, because Christianity went from being illegal and subversive to legal and supportive of the imperial structure under Constantine and his successors, the objectiveness of the Fathers in intepreting the content of revelation was somehow impugned. Basically, it is the same argument has the last one but rehashed - an external transformation in the Church's socio-political station is taken as grounds to assume an inner evolution in the life of the Church - presumably, an evolution away from the Truth rather than towards a deeper understanding of it.

This proposition rests on three assumptions, which I think are all ungrounded: (1) That the political categories of "progressive" and "conservative" are rightly applied to the Church of Christ (2) That Christianity was "progressive" before the conversion of the empire and "conservative" after its conversion (3) That the changes in the post-Constantinian Church represent not just developments but breaks with the apostolic past. Let us examine and break down these assumptions one at a time. I ask your forgiveness ahead of time for the length and depth of this post, but it is a complex issue that requires a complex answer.

1) Political categories applied to the Church?

It is a constant temptation, especially in modernist or liberal ideologies, to see the Church in political terms: progressive or regressive, liberal or conservative, supporting the oppressed or serving as a tool of the oppressors. Such blanket judgments about the Church's relation to existing social mores should always make us pause. The Church is not a political body and does not fall into political categories; she is a supernatural reality that transcends them all. The Catechism, quoting Gaudium et Spes, reminds us of this: "The Church, because of her commission and competence, is not to be confused in any way with the political community. She is both the sign and the safeguard of the transcendental character of the human person" (CCC 2245).

Since the mission of the Church is the salvation of souls, the Church will be in different relations to differing political institutions in the context of this mission. Hence, she appears conservative to some and progressive to others; in reality, she is both because she is neither. She is neither conservative as the political conservatives mean it, nor is she liberal as the political liberals mean it. When a political ideology denigrates some long-held teaching of the Church, then the Church appears conservative for adhering to tradition. The Church also appears progressive when it challenges society to have more care for the poor, the fatherless and the widow. and to turn away from the snares of imperialism, consumerism and unchecked capitalism.

So, in the first place, we must recognize the supernatural character of the Church and her transcendental mission. This reality means that, although words like "conservative" and "liberal" might help in understanding the Church's position on certain specific matters relative to the culture at large, but these political categories are of no help in coming to understand the Church's inner reality.

If political categories are inadequate, how can we best describe the Church? Pope Pius XII answers this for us: "If we would define and describe this true Church of Jesus Christ - which is the One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church - we shall find nothing more noble, more sublime, or more divine than the expression "the Mystical Body of Christ" (Mystici Corporis, 13). All of these theories that we are debunking fail in that they refuse to see the mystical reality behind the institution.

2) Was the Church always "progressive" before Constantine?

But now that we have dealt with the issue of our language and categorization of the Church, let us examine the question of the Church's societal role prior to the advent of Constantine. It is generally assumed that the pre-Constantinian Church was progressive and subversive of Roman culture while the post-Constantinian Church was conservative, oppressive, and upheld the status quo. An group is said to be "progressive" or "subversive" if it undermines accepted mores by insisting on a loosening the bonds of tradition; hence, support of homosexual marriage is said to be "progressive" because it proposes loosening the bonds of traditional mores and weakening the power of tradition. A group is said to be "conservative" or "regressive" (or even "oppressive") if it seeks to uphold the power of traditional mores and represented by the status quo. Hence, proponents of traditional marriage are called "conservative" because they believe in upholding and strengthening the traditional understanding of marriage.

Unfortunately for my interlocutor's view, we see the Church prior to Constantine being quite conservative on many issues. For example, while the sanctity of marriage was basically a joke in the late pagan empire (with adultery common and divorce rampant), the Church insisted on a extraordinarily rigid marital code - marriage only once and no such thing as divorce. Old Republican Rome had strict marital mores as well, but they were about 400 years extinct by the time the Church was large enough to influence Roman society. It was an amazingly regressive position to take socially, as if we were to suddenly today to insist on the etiquette of the court of Louis XIV as the social norm. Yet this was prior to Constantine. Here we see the pre-Constantinian Church as definitively conservative.

Abortion is another example. While ancient and Republican Rome allowed infanticide for deformities (see Table IV of the Twelve Tables), Roman tradition strictly condemned abortion. The early Roman view of abortion is summed up in the Sentences of the Roman jurist Paulus, who wrote: "Those who administer a beverage for the purpose of producing abortion, or of causing affection, although they may not do so with malicious intent, still, because the act offers a bad example, shall, if of humble rank, be sent to the mines; or, if higher in degree, shall be relegated to an island, with the loss of a portion of their property. If a man or a woman should lose his or her life through such an act, the guilty party shall undergo the extreme penalty." Yet this law had become a dead letter by the time Paulus wrote it, for beginning in the 1st century BC, abortion became more and more acceptable, so much so that Augustus had to order all bachelors in Rome to marry and have children because they were aborting themselves out of existence!

And yet here again we see Christianity exerting a conservative influence, not a progressive one. The Church had always opposed infanticide as well as abortion, despite the trend of Roman society to embrace contraception and abortion. It was the Church that called Rome back to its ancient discipline through her exemplary moral virtue.

Likewise, we could point to examples of Christian progressiveness after the age of Constantine. If the post-Constantinian Church really was only a tool of the state, we would not expect it to subvert any of the power structures of the state. Yet we see the abolition of slavery in the Christian empire, that very institution which the pagan empire was built on. Another example is the ending of the gladiatorial games and of the Olympics, the removal of the Statue of Victory, the continued exodus of men to the monasteries who in prior ages would have been diverted to the military. In all these movements the Church exercised a progressive influence upon the post-Constantinian empire.

Not to mention the moderating effect that Christianity had upon the monarchy. Roman monarchy after Constantine was abundantly better than monarchy before Christianity. There are no more tyrants like Caligula, Nero or Caracalla in the Christian age. Plus the imperial throne became more stable, despite the fact that the empire itself became less so. From 217 to 313 there were 30 emperors, almost all of whom died violently. But from 313 to 410 there were only 12 western emperors, almost all of whom died naturally. Add to this the  role the Church had in confronting and condemning emperors who overstepped their bounds, as when St. Athanasius confronted Constantius II about the latter's support for Arianism or when Theodosius was rebuked by St. Ambrose. No noble of the age of Nero or even Hadrian would rebuke an emperor in such a way; this freedom of expression (called parrhesia) had a truly progressive effect on the empire. Check out this this post here for more on parrhesia.

The Church before Constantine prayed for and supported the pagan emperors just as the Church after Constantine prayed for and supported the Christian emperors; pre-Constantinian apologists like St. Justin wrote rebukes to emperor's for their immorality just as post-Constantinian bishops like Athanasius and Amrbose rebuked Christian emperors. When looking at the patristic Church, the one constant is that it was always jealous to guard its own prerogatives.

So what does all this have to do with the Church Fathers? If nothing else, it at least demonstrates that the Church cannot be said to be "progressive" pre-Constantine but "conservative" post-Constantine. It is not that clear-cut of a break. In fact, as we will see below, there really was no break - and if there is no break, it is that much more difficult to establish a break down in the quality or reliability of patristic thought during the period.

3) The development of the 4th century was not a rupture

We have it on the authority of the illustrious Cardinal Newman that, if we see hints or traces of a dogma in earlier phases of Church history, we ought to interpret those dogmatic seedlings in the context of the fully formed dogmas they later became. Newman says, "The fact of such early or recurring intimations of tendencies which afterward are fully realized, is a sort of evidence that those later and more systematic fulfillments are only in accord with its original idea" (Essay on the Development of Doctrine, II:V.5.1), thus, though a systematic Mariology was not worked out until the middle ages, we have Ireneaus, for example, teaching that Mary is the "cause of salvation" by untying the "knot of Eve's disobedience" (Adv. Haer. 3:22:24). Though Irenaeus' statement does not contain anything like the systematic fullness of medieval Mariology, because the rude patristic Mariology was followed by that of the medievals, it makes sense to see statements like that by Ireneaus as representing the true precursor of the later development.

Thus St. Ireneaus' statement on Mary is always placed as one of the most important Mariological texts of the patristic era, though Protestant commentators, because they do not accept Newman's principle of definite anticipation, fail to see any connection between the Mariology of Ireneaus and that of, say, Bernard of Clairvaux. But, if we are to make sense of the doctrinal development that occurred in the Church from the patristic to the medieval period, we must understand that earlier doctrinal seeds should be interpreted in light of what they eventually grow into, just like a sapling or an infant is cared for with an aim towards what it will eventually become.

If we understand this principle, we see that what happened between 313 and the early medieval period was not a rupture, but a continuation of that development which had already been going on uninterrupted for centuries. It is very important to note the circular reasoning in the interlocutor's accusations: In order to postulate a huge doctrinal break between pre-Constantinian and post-Constantinian Christianity, one has to adopt the assumption that Catholicism of the 5th and 6th centuries was errant. "Obviously there was a drastic change after Constantine because the Church in the 5th and 6th centuries started teaching that Mary is the Mother of God and that the Bishop of Rome is the head of the Church on earth!" This only seems like a rupture if you have predetermined that these doctrines are errant. But to those who accept the Catholic Faith and understand that these doctrines which Protestants assume "appeared" in the 4t, 5th and 6th centuries were actually developments from earlier ideas present even in apostolic Christianity, there is no rupture, only a glorious unfolding and a seamless continuity.

This rupture, attributed to a supposed influence of Greek philosophical and Roman pagan thought on the Church's doctrines during this time, is what Mark Shea has rightly referred to as the Pagan creep Theory - that throughout the patristic age (but especially after the time of Constantine), the Church, in order to accomodate the world, allowed pagan influences to "creep" into the Church, eventually perverting the Gospel to such a degree that it would be unrecognizable to Christ and the Apostles.

This Pagan Creep Theory is widely accepted as fact in the Protestant world; indeed, I myself once touted it as truth. But there are many huge problems with it, which Mark Shea points out in his excellent book By What Authority? According to Shea (whom I second here), the Pagan Creep Theory requires us to believe some principles which would be considered quite absurd by the principles of secular history (that is, if we were dealing with any other subject besides the catholic Church). The Pagan Creep Theory forces us to believe the following "schizophrenic absurdities" about the Church Fathers:

• That these presumably apostate successors of the apostles were both promulgating alien pagan dogmas in direct defiance of apostolic teaching and simultaneously undergoing suffering, persecution, and fearful deaths with an avowed determination to bear witness to the Faith of the Apostles. 

• The these same Fathers were allowing pagan ideas en masse into the Faith while at the same time contending vehemently over the subtelties of Trinitarian and Christological theology, like the difference between homoousios and homoiousios.

• That not one single Christian anywhere was willing to oppose this apostasy, even though many Churches were apostolic and had the apostolic preaching "ringing in their ears."

• And that while all this was going on, all of these supposed apostates and heretics (the Fathers), these lax stooges of paganism who perverted Scripture, were all still willing to vehemently defend Scripture against the paganizing attacks of other heretics, such as Marcion and Montanus (see By What Authority, pp.148-151).

When confronted with the contradiction we must believe to hold this Pagan Creep Theory, we can see how absurd it truly is.

But if the explosion of Catholic dogma appearing in the writings in the 4th and 5th centuries is not due to a copromise with the world or the accommodation of paganism, to what do we attribute it?

I would attribute it simply to the cessation of the persectuions. Anyboy who has really read the Fathers, even without acknowledging Newman's principle of definite anticipation, can see that even the pre-Nicene Fathers hold many peculiarly Catholic dogmas - the Real Presence, consecrated virginity, monasticism, the priesthood, episcopate and even indulgences are clearly and undeniably found in the pre-Nicene Fathers. But, as the pre-Nicene Fathers practiced the discipline of arcana (secrecy) because of constant persecution, we ought not to be surprised that they did not write more and only alluded to certain dogmas in less precise terms than we would like, since many of their treatises were not so much theological as apologetical or pastoral. Once the persecutions ceased, the Church could come out in to the light and begin to truly develop a systematic theology, expounding on those truths she had always professed, but which the necessity of secrecy due to persecution had always kept partially obscured. Thus, the developments of the 4th and 5th centuries can be seen in this light to be nothing other than the mature theoloical blossoming of a garden whose seeds were firmly planted in the apostolic and pre-Nicene age.

To sum up - it is not true to simply assert that the Church went from being subversive to conservative; the reality is more complex than that. But even given this complex realities, there are better historical solutions to the developments of dogma in the 4th and 5th centuries than to simply assert that the political changes in the Church's status vis-a-vis the empire changed its doctrine substantially, as exemplified by the absurdities we fall into if we adopt the Pagan Creep Theory. What accounts for the astounding development of dogma in the generations after Nicea is the cessation of persecution which allowed a freer and more open development and a real systematic theology, which though it certainly became more refined, nevertheless preserved and built on the Faith of the apostolic age.

Until next time, when we look at the influence of the development of the hierarchy and the monastic movement.

Requiescat in Pace, Otto von Hapsburg (1912-2011)

This week marked the passing of Archduke Otto von Hapsburg, the eldest son of  Blessed Karl of Austria, head of the House of Hapsburg and last crowned prince of the venerable Hapsburg family.Otto passed away in his sleep on July 4th at the venerable age of 99.

Otto was born in 1912, only two years before the Austro-Hungarian empire would be engulfed in the First World War. He became Crown-Prince of Austria in 1916 when his father took the imperial throne but was forced from Vienna after the war when the Austro-Hungarian empire. When Blessed Karl died in 1922, Otto assumed the leadership of the Hapsburg house.

From 1922 to 1961 he tirelessly advocated for the the restoration of the Hapsburg monarchy and claimed the throne of Austria; at the same time, he opposed Nazism, Communism and worked for pan-European cooperation. Otto was a devoted Catholic and believed that, after the horrors of two World Wars and the spectre of Communism looming over the world, the greatest way to ensure peace in Europe was through a pan-European association based loosely on the old Holy Roman Empire. To this end, he served as Vice President (1957–1973) and President (1973–2004) of the International Paneuropean Union, and served as a Member of the European Parliament for the Christian Social Union of Bavaria (CSU) 1979–1999.

Shamefully, Otto was banned from his homeland of Austria after World War II and the establishment of the Austrian Republic. Despite his heroic opposition to Hitler during the thirties, the Austrian Republic continued to ban Otto from his homeland, leaving him stateless (he was, however, granted honorary citizenship in over 1,300 Austrian towns, was an Knight of Malta and was even offered the throne of Spain by Francisco Franco in 1961). The Austrian authorities took the Hapsburg ban very seriously; if it was rumored that Otto was in the country, police would be dispatched to search for him, as he was labeled an enemy of the state. 

Finally, in 1961, Otto signed an agreement with the government of Austria formally renouncing all his claims to the throne and promising to stay out of Austrian politics in exchange for Austrian citizenship. This was only a gesture on Otto's part, something he did "for purely practical reasons" and never agreed with; he stated, ""This was such an infamy, I'd rather never have signed it. They demanded that I abstain from politics. I would not have dreamed of complying. Once you have tasted the opium of politics, you never get rid of it." Many progressives in the country were wary of allowing Otto back in - it was not until 1966 that Otto was finally issued his Austrian passport.

From 1966 until the death of his wife in 2007, he worked tirelessly in European politics. He went into seclusion after the death of his wife Princess Regina in 2007.

I was blessed to have the opportunity to meet Otto von Hapsburg in October of 2003 when he came to visit the students of the International Theological Institute in Gaming, Austria. He was robust and energetic, surprisingly so for someone who at that time had just turned 91. He gave a short speech on European politics and the (then) escalating conflict in Iraq. I got a chance to address him personally during the question and answer session and asked him his opinion on the role of John Paul II on the fall of Communism. He replied that he believed John Paul II was absolutely instrumental in the collapse of Communism in Europe and that the media did not understand the cultural role the Church, and the Pope, played in this struggle.

Some other anecdotes from other students' questions:

• He insisted that we all understand that the Kurds in Iraq were not actually Iraqis, but Turks who migrated into northern Iraq generations ago. He told us that in his day they were called "Mountain Turks." He insisted that we view Iraqi sectarian violence as ethnic and not religious.
  
  
• He told us that his mother, Empress Zita of Bourbon-Parma, began teaching him the complex Hugarian language at age two, saying that he needed to master Hungarian as well as German in order to rule two peoples. He asked his father, Blessed Karl, if he could learn English. Blessed Karl told him that he had to learn seven other languages before he was allowed to learn English, because, in the words of Blessed Karl, "English makes you lazy and you won't want to learn other languages after that." He then told us that at that time (2003) he was working on learning Tibetan, which was about the 19th language he knew.
  
  
• Somebody asked him what he thought about smoking. He replied that the U.N. had declared an annual smoking awareness day where everybody was supposed to give up smoking; he then stated that on that day he always made sure to light up a huge cigar. This got the crowd laughing.
  
  
• When somebody asked him who he thought the most influential European of the 20th century was, he said immediately that it was Pope Pius XII. He stated that Pope Pius XII was not only a great leader but a saintly man who deserved more recognition than he got.

A lifelong Catholic and believer in the vision of Europe united under Catholic monarchy, Otto will be sorely missed by all faithful Catholics. Sadly, his passing in Europe seems to have barely been noticed. Here is a photo of his coffin laying in state at the chapel of Poecking on Lake Starnberg in Bavaria. Notice the number of persons in attendance:

Archduke Otto von Hapsburg, last of the great Hapsburg monarchs, the first rulers of Christendom, requiescat in pace.

Related: Duke Henri of Luxembourg stripped of his power for opposing abortion.
             "Good night, good prince" by John Zmirak

Good-bye French month from Fontgombault

Well, French Month is over already! There was much more I hoped to get through that I never had time for - some stuff about French consumer cooperatives in the Third Republic, a profile of some of the extreme liberal bishops recently appointed in various French dioceses, and an outline of Gallicanism. Alas, I got too bogged down in the Jansenism posts! Oh well!

Thanks for following along during French Month and for all your comments and feedback. To close this month out, how about a little slice of what is best about French culture? The Benedictine monks of Fontgombault singing the introit Gaudeamus:

The Mandylion

The Mandylion was perhaps one of the most revered relics of Christendom, and like many other relics, it made its way to France during the Middle Ages. The Mandylion (called in the East the Keramidion) was a small, rectangular piece of cloth upon which an image of Christ's face was imprinted. The orthodox , due to its great antiquity, considered it the first icon.

The story of the Mandylion goes back to the apocryphal tale of Agbar of Edessa and Christ, which is first recorded in Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History Book 1.13.1-20. Here, Eusbius relates how, during our Lord's life, a certain Agbar, King of Edessa, sent a message to Jesus asking Him to come to Edessa to heal the king of an infirmity. According to Eusbius, our Lord sent a letter back to Agbar, explaining that He would not come at that time but would later send one of His disciples. The letter is transcribed in Eusebius:

"Blessed are you who hast believed in me without having seen me. For it is written concerning me, that they who have seen me will not believe in me, and that they who have not seen me will believe and be saved. But in regard to what you have written me, that I should come to you, it is necessary for me to fulfill all things here for which I have been sent, and after I have fulfilled them thus to be taken up again to him that sent me. But after I have been taken up I will send to you one of my disciples, that he may heal your disease and give life to you and yours" (Ecclesiastical History, I.13.9).

It is not my intention here to comment on the probable historicity of this letter; if it is our Lord's, it is the only thing He left behind in writing that we possess. At any rate, Eusbius says this letter was carried by a disciple named Ananias. Later, after the Ascension, St. Thaddeus came to the court of Edessa and healed Agbar as promised by our Lord.

There is no mention of an image here, nor in the diaries of Egeria (c. 380), when Edessa and the Agbar legend is mentioned again. The first mention of an image in Edessa comes from the Doctrine of Addai, written around 400. In this account, the messenger sent by Agbar to Jesus happened to be a painter and made a painting of Jesus based on His likeness, taking it back to Agbar who received it with joy. The image was later transferred to a chamber within the wall of the city gates of Edessa, where it was believed that it would draw down the mercy of the Lord in defending the city. Later (c. 593), Evagrius Scholasticus called the image "God-made", suggesting it was supernatural in origin.

The Mandylion is discovered in the walls of Edessa

From 609 to 944 Edessa was under the control of first the pagan Sassanids and then the Muslims, and accounts of the image dry up. In 944 the city was conquered by the Byzantines and the image suddenly reappeared, presumably having been kept hidden for the last three centuries. It was removed from Edessa to Constantinople where it was placed in the royal palace chapel by Emperor Romanos.

Once we trace the image to Constantinople, we can see how the French will play in to this. Of course, Constantinople was taken and sacked by French-Norman crusaders during the Fourth Crusade in 1204. At this time, the Mandylion and the Shroud of Turin were both taken from the Orthodox and made their way west, and the Mandylion was passed to St. Louis IX of France by the Norman King Baldwin II of Constantinople in 1241. There is some evidence that it passed through the hands of the Templars as well.

The saintly King of France placed the holy relic in his famous Sainte-Chapelle, the chapel he completed in 1248 that contained some of the most wonderful relics in Christendom, including the cape of St. Martin, the Crown of Thorns, the True Cross, the Lance of Longinus, and many other relics of Christ and the Apostles and even some clothing of the Virgin Mary. These relics were the common patrimony of the French kings until the Revolution of 1789, when they met a similar fate as the relics of Joan of Arc. The scattered relics that survived were handed over to the Archbishop of Paris during the Napoleonic era, but the Mandylion never resurfaced. The Vatican exhibits an image that many claim to be the Mandylion of Edessa, but it's connection is not certain; it is definitely possible that the sacred Mandylion was spirited away to Italy during the Revolution, but there is no way to be sure.

Jansenism (part 3)

Jansenists and Jesuits dispute as an angel carrying the bull Unigenitus flies overhead

 Finally, we come to the conclusion of this tangled and twisted heresy, this odd school of thought which began on the theoretical level with speculations about grace and will and ended in very practical denials of the Roman pontiff's ability to evaluate and pass judgment on the teachings of theologians - in effect, a denial of the teaching power of the Church.

Last time, we saw how the compromise offered to the Jansenists by Clement IX was ruptured in 1705 with the renewal of the controversy, the fierce persecution of the Jansenists of Port-Royal by an aging (and increasingly pious) Louis XIV and the publication of the bull Vineam Domini Saboath, which stated that "respectful silence" in the face of the Church's teaching was no sufficient if that silence entailed an internal dissent.

The final phase of the Jansenist controversy erupted over the bull Unigenitus. Back in 1671, an author named Quesnel had published a book entitled The Morality of the Gospel, which was basically a commentary on the four Gospels. This book was followed by the French New Testament in 1693, which was heavily footnoted by Quesnel. Upon inspection by ecclesiastical authorities, it became apparent that both The Morality of the Gospel and Quesnel's New Testament footnotes were ridden with Jansenist propositions. The pope condemned the writings in a brief of 1708, but the brief proved very unacceptable to the French church because it also condemned what were known as "Gallican liberties," alleged rights and prerogatives exercised by the French church uniquely, giving it a special degree of independence.

The popes had fought the alleged Gallican liberties, but again not wanting to face off against Jansenism and the French clergy at the same time, Pope Clement XI, at the behest of Louis XIV, drafted a bull that would condemn Jansenism without reference to any of the Gallican liberties. The result was the bull Unigenitus of 1713.

Unigenitus was the Humanae Vitae of its day, a hard-hitting encyclical that condemned the popularized errors of the Jansenists and left them no wriggle room. The bull condemned 101 errors found in Quesnel's works; some of the most important condemnations were of the following propositions:

• Grace works with omnipotence and is irresistible
  Without grace man can only commit sin 
• Christ died for the elect only (Calvinism) 
• Every love that is not supernatural is evil
• Without supernatural love there can be no hope in God, no obedience to His law, no good work, no prayer, no merit, no religion
• The prayer of the sinner and his other good acts performed out of fear of punishment are only new sins
• The Church comprises only the just and the elect
• The reading of the Bible is binding on all
• Sacramental absolution should be postponed till after satisfaction (here they resemble Donatists)
• The chief pastors can exercise the Church's power of excommunication only with the consent, at least presumed, of the whole body of the Church (this was a hallmark of Gallicanism)
• Unjust excommunication does not exclude the excommunicated from union with the Church

From these condemned propositions, we can see that the Jansenists were an odd combination of Catholic Puritan-Calvinists and rigorists in the spirit of the Donatists and the Montanists.

The bull was accepted in France, but an important ecclesiastic, Cardinal Noailles, Archbishop of Paris, tried to prevent its universal and unqualified acceptance by the French clergy. Noailles was an opponent of the Jesuits, a sympathizer with the Jansenists (though he condemned them publicly), and a friend to both Fenelon and the influential Lutheran Ludwig von Zinzendorf. Noailles was to be summoned to Rome by Clemen XI to answer for his disobedience, but many in the French clergy protested vehemently that the removal of the Cardinal to Rome for judgment would be a violation of their Gallican liberties. Louis XIV begged Clement to allow a national French council to pass judgment on the Cardinal. 

Instead, Clement drafted two briefs, one very severe, and one more paternal in tone, and delivered them to Louis XIV, asking him to present to Noailles whichever one seemed best depending on the Cardinal's disposition towards the Holy See. Louis vacillated, however, and neither of the briefs had been delivered at the time of his death on September 1, 1715. The new regent, Philippe II, Duc de Orleans, opposed the bull Unigenitus, not because he was a Jansenist, but because he saw it as an erosion of the liberties of the Gallican church. He refused to censure Cardinal Noailles and convinced the Sorbonne to revoke their support of the bull. The Universities of Nantes and Reims now also rejected the Bull. In consequence Clement XI withdrew from the Sorbonne all the papal privileges which it possessed and attempted to deprive it of the power of conferring academic degrees. The Jansenist controversy was morphing into a dispute about the rights of the French church.

As Clement XI worked tirelessly for the submission of Noailles and the unconditional acceptance of the bull, four more bishops joined Noailles in his protest; in 1717, they appealed the judgment of Pope Clement XI to a future ecumenical Council and a future pope, taking the name "appelants" and trotting out the Conciliarist decrees of Constance and Basel in support of their position. This right of appeal to a future Council was one of the main points of the Gallicanists - that the pope was not the final arbiter in any dispute, as one could licitly deny the pope obedience if there was good reason to believe that his disciplines would be overturned by a future council (the same argument used today by proponents of contraception and women's ordination within the Church; "this is going to change one day, so it's alright to dissent right now").

Ten more bishops joined the resistance over the summer of 1717, and more than 2,000 priests, especially from the vicinity around Paris. The church in France seemed to be in general revolt.

Clement fought back. In March, 1718, he condemned the appeal of the bishops as heretical. That summer he issued a bull (Pastoralis Officii) excommunicating anyone that refused to accept the bull Unigenitus without reservation. The enforcement of this bull was very strict; interdict was even used in some places, and there are stories of loyal bishops commanding that no person in his diocese could receive baptism or last rites unless they swore an unqualified oath of submission to Unigenitus.

In the end, the Vatican made use of one of its most potent weapons: time. Resistance to the bull gradually wore down. As Noailles got older, and as the rest of the French clergy began to submit rather than face excommunication, he pledged a vague submission to Unigenitus in 1720. In 1728, on his deathbed, he made a sincere and unqualified submission. By this time Unigenitus was accepted universally throughout France and Jansenism seems to have died out, at least in France.

To things to note here: first, we must point out the role of the Jesuits in the Jansenist controversy. Throughout these years, the Jesuits were consistently opposed to the heretics at every turn, constantly frustrating their attempts to overturn papal authority and overthrowing their sophistic arguments. This earned the Jesuits the unceasing ire of the upper class Parisian intelligentsia who tended to support the Jansenists. In the following generation, the philosophes, many of whom were sympathetic to the Janesenists of who themselves had drank from the waters of Port-Royal, attacked the Jesuits with unrestrained hatred. The Jesuits were of course suppressed in France in 1764. Thus, we can see the Jansenist controversy as the backdrop to the later attacks against the Jesuits.

Second, some have said that the prolonged Jansenist controversy, with its convoluted arguments against legitimate authority, its demands of appeal to future popes and councils, and its insistence on the unique rights of the Gallican church independent of the universal Church, inculcated in the French a spirit of resistance to authority that festered and blew up during the Revolution. I think this is at least remotely plausible - a spirit of resistance to authority, once unleashed, is very seldom restrained. I don't think there is a direct link, however.

Thanks for your patience in journeying with me through this mess of distinction, counter-distinctions and ever morphing lines of argumentation. 

Read part 1 in this series here.
Read part 2 in this series here.

Jansenism (part 2)

 

The Jansenist nuns of Port-Royal are forcibly removed by agents of Louis XIV

Last time we dug into the origins of the Jansenist controversy in the disputes of the relation between will and grace. It is very interesting to note how what was originally a theoretical dispute about grace transformed into a very practical argument on the powers of the papacy to understand and proscribe certain errors in the works of theologians. As a historian, when I study the Jansenist controversy I am much more interested in these disputes over matter of right and matter of fact than I am about the actual content of the Augustinus and the doctrines of the Jansenists.

The Jansenists could not have maintained their opposition to the Church's authorities for so long had it not been for the unique pool of polemical and literary talent centered on the convent of Port-Royal, which became the Jansenist stronghold in France. Port-Royal, just on the outskirts of Paris, was founded in 1204 as a convent of Benedictine nuns. Discipline at the abbey declined during the age of the religious wars; during the reign of Henry IV, the rank of abbess was even bestowed on an eleven year old girl!

In the early 1600s, however, the convent got caught up in the post-Tridentine spirit of reform and adopted the strict observance of the Cistercian rule. The number of nuns went from 12 to 100 and the pope, at the behest of the king, removed Port-Royal from the jurisdiction of Citeaux and placed it under the authority of the Archbishop of Paris. The nuns became known for their piety, and man lay persons, of the higher and lower ranks, began to set up cottages and temporary homes outside the Port-Royal convent to breathe the same air of piety as the nuns. Nobody, even the most vehement opponents of Jansenism, deny that a genuine spirit of piety pervaded the convent.

It is quite unfortunate, however, that in 1633 the nuns adopted as their patron and spiritual guide one Jean du Vergier de Hauranne, Abbé de Saint-Cyran. The Abbé de Saint-Cyran happened to be the best friend and first promoter of Cornelius Jansen; the two had been in seminary together and he had encouraged in latter in his composition of the Augustinus. In addition to the typical Jansenist views on grace, the Abbé de Saint-Cyran also taught that perfect contrition was necessary for salvation, rejecting the Church's teaching that imperfect contrition (also called attrition) would suffice. Under the leadership of the Abbé de Saint-Cyran, the nuns gradually adopted the Jansenist heresy and Port-Royal became a center of Jansenism for the next three quarters of a century, attracting great minds liek Pascal to their community, but also most of the snobbish intelligensia who saw dissent from ecclesiastical authority as a mark of high society.

In the wake of the Jansenist dissent from the formulary of 1665, Louis XIV inaugurated a fierce wave of political repression against the Jansenists - some were exiled to distant parts of the kingdom, all Jansenist schools were closed, some leaders were imprisoned, the nuns were forbidden to profess novices or admit new novitiates; several nuns were displaced and moved to other convents. All adherents to the movement were banned from court, and some Jansenist leaders, under force, were compelled to sign the formulary of 1665. It was this persecution (which lasted until around 1669) that led Pascal to compose his famous Lettres Provinciales, attacking the moral formation of the Jesuits and attempting to exonerate the Port-Royalists.

 The Port-Royalists were aided by four recalcitrant French bishops, who refused to sign the formulary of 1665 and who openly opposed both the pope and King Louis XIV in his suppression of the Jansenits. Louis threatened to deprive them of their temporalities and increase the political persecution on the Jansenists. Fearing a general breakdown of the situation, Pope Clement IX sent his nuncio Pietro Bargellini to Paris to assess the situation and work out some sort of satisfactory solution to the impending schism. Bargellini worked tirelessly with the French foreign minister Hugues de Lionne (successor to Cardinal Mazarin) to come up with a compromise that would satisfy both parties. The result was what came to be known as the Peace of Clement IX or the Clementine Peace.

That the peace was a compromise, nobody denies; yet, it was a compromise that Clement IX deemed acceptable in the face of what could become a full-blown schism. According to the terms of the peace, Jansenist bishops would agree to sign the formulary of 1665 without reservation. In exchange for their signatures, the pope spared them the humiliation of having to publicly renounce their errors. In other words, the Holy Father allowed them to simply sign their assent to the formulary without formally recanting anything, on the understanding that they would maintain a respectful silence on the controversial propositions.The nuns of Port-Royal were also included in this amnesty.

The peace endured for a generation, but it had one very serious flaw in that it was not defined what "respectful silence" inferred. Clement IX had assumed, that since the bishops had signed the formulary, that the permitted silence was simply a gesture to help the French bishops save face by not having to humble themselves publicly. The pope had assumed that the bishops had in fact rejected Jansenism internally and did not interpret the permitted silence in any other way. The Jansenists, on the other hand, interpreted the permitted silence to mean that though they had signed the formulary out of obedience, they were still free to internally dissent on these points so long as they did not make their views known publicly.

The controversy broke out again in 1701 when a case was sent to the Sorbonne inquiring whether or not the peace of Clement permitted a man to sign the formulary while dissenting internally, as the Jansenists had supposed. The Sorbonne theologians ruled in favor of the Jansenists, leading the pope, Clement XI, to issue a severe condemnation of their opinion in 1705, in which he accused the Sorbonne theologians of rashness and a desire to revive the controversy. Louis XIV concurred with Clement, except that he found in Clement's condemnation some statements that the king felt curbed the rights of the French clergy too stringently (a reference to the other controversy of the age, that of "Gallican liberties"). Clement, not wanting to take on Gallicanism and Jansenism at the same time, reissued a new bull Vineam Domini Sabaoth in July, 1705, which while saying nothing on Gallican liberties, condemned the "respectful silence" of the Jansenists in the following terms:

"[T]he respectful silence, by which the Jansenists sought to dispense themselves from condemning, internally, the sense of the Augustinus, as heretical, was only a deceitful veil to cover error, instead of renouncing it...By respectful silence, a person did not satisfy the obedience, due to the apostolic constitutions, against the book of Jansenius; but that all the faithful of Jesus Christ should condemn the propositions as heretical; and reject, not only by mouth, but also with the heart, the sense of the book of Jansenius, condemned in the five propositions; and it is declared to be unlawful to subscribe the formulary of Alexander VII with any other mind or sentiment." (Vineam Domini Sabaoth).

As an aside, this bull is a good source to go to when talking with progressives who claim the Church allows internal dissent so long as the dissent is not given public voice. Clement XI clearly says it is not so.

The bull was registered by the French parliament and accepted by the clergy of France. Yet the Jansenists tried to make yet another distinction to avoid submission: The bull, they argued, had not decided the issue. They readily admitted that respectful silence was not true obedience when it concerned matters of faith; but the real question, as the Jansenists put it, was whether respectful silence was sufficient when dealing with matters of fact. The bull had not addressed this issue, and therefore the Jansenists said they were in the right to continue their dissent on the issue of whether or not the condemned propositions actually occurred in the Augustinus. One wonders, if the Jansenists fought so hard to claim that the condemned propositions were rightly condemned but not found in the Augustinus, what propositions were they fighting for?

Louis XIV was extremely irritated and renewed the persecution, this time centering on the nuns of Port-Royal. The authorities came with carriages to disperse the nuns to different convent and the abbey itself was demolished. The grounds were turned up, gardens demolished and even the bodies of the dead dug up and removed. The physical center of Jansenism had been destroyed, although many of the Jansenist clergy and their supporters remained obstinate.

We'll conclude this series on Jansenism next time with a history of the controversies surrounding the bull Unigenitus.

Jansenism (part 1)

What is Jansenism? One cannot discuss the history of the Catholic Church in France without mentioning this heresy, which rent the French church from 1652 almost until the Revolution. The interesting thing about Jansenism is that it is so little understood, even by educated Catholics. We all know of the epic battles of St. Athanasius against Arius, and in doing so comprehend what the heresy of Arianism was, exactly. Likewise, most of us are acquainted with the beliefs and oddities associated with the Cathar-Albigensian movement in medieval France, simply by virtue of their strangeness, if nothing else. But how many of us are really well versed in the complexities of the Jansenist controversy? Who was Cornelius Jansen? On what point of dissent did the Jansenists take their stand, and why did the Holy See go to such extreme lengths to crush this obscure heresy?

The problem with Jansenism is that it was concerned with one of the most complex areas of Catholic theology – that of the interaction between free will and grace. To an uneducated layman like myself, this branch of theology seems incredibly complicated and I think it wisest (for myself at least) to maintain an attitude of humility when dealing with these mysteries, lest I forget myself and try to arrogantly understand the deep things of God. I do not think I am mistaken in saying many Catholics feel the same way about these questions of free will and grace; content with a few definitive truths to serve as guide posts along the road, we leave the more intense exploration of these realms to greater intellects than ourselves.

The Jansenist controversy can be divided roughly into two phases – first, the controversy surrounding the work Augustinus published by Cornelius Jansen; second, the controversy aroused by the publication of the bull Unigenitus, which put the nail in the coffin on Jansenism. In this post, we will look at the origins of Jansenism and the book Augustinus.

But before we even proceed to this, I think we ought to remind ourselves of the two extremes that we are in danger of falling into regarding free will and grace – one is that of Pelagianism in assigning too great a role to free will and debasing God’s grace; the other, of course, is that of Calvinism, in which free will is negated and the operation of grace inflated to the point that we arrive at total (or double) predestination. These extremes are the Scylla and Charybdis of the theology of grace; a truly Catholic approach to this problem must sail skillfully between these two dangers, turning neither to the left nor to the right.

Perhaps it would be best to remind ourselves of what the Catholic position on this issue is, so that standing in the light, we can better evaluate the defects in the Jansenist system. This is no easy task, but I think the orthodox teaching on grace can be summed up in five points:

1) The grace merited by Christ is necessary for us for all actions of piety and the exercise of every virtue and should be asked of from God.

2) With the help of grace, all the commandments of God are possible to obey, such that a chaste and holy Christian life without mortal sin is possible. Without grace, activity in the order of salvation is not only more difficult and laborious, it is altogether impossible. Furthermore, without this grace, we nor even persevere in sanctity.

3) Grace prevents and aids our wills in such a way that we owe our salvation to God’s grace; if we do fall, it should be imputed to ourselves.

4) Grace strengthens and supplements our freedom, but in no way destroys it.

5) While maintaining the existence and freedom of the will, we should nevertheless remain in a posture of humility, remembering that our will is aided by grace in ways we don’t understand.

Beyond these five points, I think the Catholic layman ought not to probe too much – let us be humble and content to admit our ignorance on some of the more intricate questions here. I believe I have presented the Catholic teaching here accurately, but I confess my ignorance on this branch of theology and welcome any correction on this point.

In the years leading up to the Jansenist controversy, the views of Catholic theologians had been divided between several schools; the most pertinent regarding the Jansenist controversy was between the school of Michael Baius (Michael de Bay), who, citing St. Augustine,  tended to favor grace excessively, and those of the Spanish Jesuit Molinos, who opposed Baius fervently and tended to favor free will. The disputes between these two parties led to Paul VI summoning a congregation of cardinals in 1607 (The Congregation de Auxiliis) in which it was decreed that the Dominicans and Jesuits were to reconcile their differences, adhere to the established teaching of the Church while allowing for diversity of opinion on those points still left open to dispute, and to refrain from censuring and attacking each other. Beyond this, much of the matter of the dispute was left open. Baius, while not condemned by name, had several of his propositions condemned from erroneous to heretical and was ordered to recant them, which he did, although many of his errors would later be found in Jansenism.

Thus, there was already a ripe tradition of debate on this issue by the time we get to Cornelius Jansen, bishop of Ypres in Flanders. Jansen favored Baius in the dispute and, to lend support to these opinions, wrote a treatise on the issue of grace entitled Augustinus, which purported to be a compendium of the teachings of St. Augustine of Hippo on the subject. This was meant as a vindication of Baius, who had also defended his heretical positions based on Augustine. Augustinus was a truly massive work. According to Jansen, he had worked on it for twenty years and had reread everything written by St. Augustine thirty times (how many of us will even read all of Augustine’s writings one time?); Jansen fell ill and died as the work was being completed, however. It was submitted with unqualified humility to Pope Urban VIII by two of Jansen’s followers in 1640.

It only took the Holy See one year to condemn several propositions found in the work. Pope Urban VIII declared that the work Augustinus contained many scandalous and heretical propositions already condemned by his predecessors (especially Paul V, St. Pius V and Gregory XIII). These condemnations were published in a bull dated March, 1640. Despite this, there was some discussion in France and Belgium on the matter, with debates continuing, though none of them arousing much attention from the papacy and with a spirit of obedience as the followers of Jansen attempted to reformulate his works in a more orthodox manner.

In 1649 the theological faculty of the Sorbonne extracted and condemned five propositions from the Augustinus. It is important for what happened next to understand that the condemned propositions were not found explicitly in the work; they were rather summaries of ideas that were in the work – an attempt to get to the heart of what Augustinus was really teaching. The condemned propositions touched on very intricate matters of grace and free will. The following teachings were condemned:

1) That some of the commandments of God are impossible to just men, even when they strive to fulfill them, because the grace to fulfill them is not given.

2) In fallen man, nobody can ever resist an interior grace.

3) To merit or demerit in our current, fallen state, it is not necessary for us to have a freedom defined as freedom from necessity; mere freedom from constraint is sufficient (I personally don’t understand this distinction – if anybody out there does, please clue me in).

4) Human nature has the power to resist or obey God’s law without any interior or preventing grace.

5) Jesus Christ did not die or shed His blood for all men, but only for the elect.

It should be noticed, especially in the second and final points, that Jansenism held some things in common with Calvinism. This is not surprising, since Calvinism and Catholicism had coexisted side by side in an uneasy truce since the Edict of Nantes (1589). It is not unreasonable to suppose some Calvinist influence in those French supporters of Jansen who helped to develop his system.

Pope Innocent X condemned these five propositions in 1653 after they were submitted to the Holy See by an assembly of eighty-five French bishops. The bull condemning them was widely accepted throughout France and Flanders. However, this of course did not put a halt to the Jansenist heresy, but rather gave rise to its next manifestation – the debate between matter of right and matter of fact. 

Recall that the five condemned propositions were not extracted from the Augustinus verbatim; rather, they were summarizations of the theological system put forth in the work, based on the opinions of learned theologians and bishops who had scrutinized it. Thus, when the bull condemning the five propositions was issued, the Jansenists made the argument that, while the pope was certainly right to condemn the five propositions, this did not imply a condemnation of Augustinus itself, since the pope could not prove that those five propositions were actually found in the book. Thus, the five propositions were justly condemned, but the bull did not state, and hence did not require the faithful to believe, that the condemned propositions were actually contained in the Augustinus in the form in which they were condemned. The condemnation of heretical principles was called the matter of right, but the question of whether or not these principles actually appeared in the Augustinus was called the matter of fact.

This objection was received with irritation by the pope, the French bishops and Louis XIV. A French synod convened under Cardinal Mazarin examined the propositions and declared that they were in fact contained in the Augustinus in the meaning assigned to them by the Holy See. The pope ratified their conclusion and issued a bull in 1654 stating that the doctrines of Jansen were condemned “as contained in his book, entitled Augustinus.” Nevertheless, the Jansenists still persisted in asserting that the condemned propositions were not found in the work, leading the new pope, Alexander VII, to publish another, more explicit decree in October, 1657, which said “the five propositions had been extracted from the work of Jansenius, and condemned in the sense, in which the doctor had explained them.”

This bull was published throughout the realm at the request of the French bishops. To give weight to this, King Louis XIV also issued an edict ordering all clergy and teachers of children to sign the formula without any distinction, explanation or restriction. Still, the Jansenists objected that edicts promulgated by the French clergy and king could not bind the whole nation. This point was countered by the most general and solemn condemnation of Jansenism yet, issued on February 15th, 1665 and ratified by the French parliament. Louis XIV appended a formula to this to be sworn to by all clergy, which read:

“I, the undersigned, submit myself to the apostolic constitution of the sovereign pontiff, Innocent X, of the 31st of May1653, and to that of Alexander VII, his successor, of the 16th of October 1656; and I reject and condemn, sincerely, the five propositions, extracted from the book of Cornelius Jansenius, entitled Augustinus, in the proper sense of the author, as the Apostolic See condemned them, by the same constitutions. I thus swear it. So help me God and the holy Gospels.”

Every objection was now removed to those who asserted that the condemned propositions were not found in the Augustinus. The Jansenists were determined not to submit, however, and proceeded to take the argument to another level, challenging the authority of the pope directly and ability of the Church to extract and condemn propositions. The argument ran as thus:

It was now established that the five propositions were found in Augustinus. However, it was asserted that the Magisterium could only rule definitively on the content of divine revelation. The content of a particular book, the existence of a proposition in a book, or the interpretation of the content of any book, could in no way be said to be a revealed fact. Therefore, the Church lacked authority to infallibly judge the content of any book. Based on this, the Jansenists maintained that the proper response to the papal condemnations of the propositions was a “respectful silence.” In other words, the faithful were free to dissent from these judgments so long as their dissent was respectful, silent and did not attack the authority of the pope.

This was actually a pretty clever argument – the pope’s job is to interpret and preserve divine revelation, and since a book by a theologian is not divine revelation, the pope possesses only a human prudence in judging such works and theological censures, such as those surrounding the Augustinus, could be at best only the judgments of the pope as a private theologian, but not as the infallible Universal Pastor.

Rather than try to answer this myself, I will let a much more eloquent speaker, Bishop Bossuet, offer the counter-point. Bossuet was vehemently opposed to the Jansenists and irritated by the perpetual attempts of the Jansenists to dodge ecclesiastical censure, gave a very reasoned response which I think best represents the thinking of the Church on this matter:

“The Church, having received so many explicit commands to reprehend, to censure, to note heretical persons, is frequently obliged to take cognizance of certain facts, and to judge them definitively. Thus, when a particular bishop, or a particular doctor, is accused of having taught verbally, or in writing, a suspected doctrine, it belongs to the office of the Church to decide, not only whether the doctrine be in itself good or bad, but whether it be true that such and such a person has taught it, or that it is contained in such and such a book. After pronouncing on the doctrine, it is her office to judge definitively on the fact; and to condemn publicly the bishop, the doctor, or the book, as teaching a bad doctrine: it is equally her office to designate the doctrine.

This is a constant truth: every person must see, that, to take this authority from the Church, is to expose her, naked and disarmed, to false teachers, and to render useless the repeated commands, and the repeated warnings which have been given to her to guard herself against them by every precaution. In effect, all the world knows that the Church has never failed to observe this command when occasion required. She has made her children see, of what importance to her, such judgments are, by two remarkable circumstances; the first, that, after she has passed sentence on innovators, she has often inserted their names in her solemn profession of faith; and, secondly, even after persons have condemned the error noted by the Church, she has denied them her communion, if they refused to subscribe to the condemnation of the persons whose errors were condemned” (Bishop Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, Letter to the Nuns of Port-Royal).

If the excuses of the Jansenists were clever, the response of Bossuet was ingenious. The argument is two-fold: in the first place, since the separation of truth from error is essential to the mission of the Church, as St. Paul warns Timothy, “Guard that which was entrusted to you,” (1 Tim. 6:20) the power to rightly, accurately and authoritatively discern truth from error in the writings of theologians can be said to be inferred in the Lord’s command to the Apostles “Teach them to observe all the things I have taught you” and His promise that “whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven.” This could also be inferred in His words to Peter, “Feed my sheep,” since to feed the sheep the food of truth, the Church must be able to discern truth from error; and this not only in the abstract, but in the concrete, as it appears in the books of theologians.

The second argument is even more ingenious, for here Bishop Bossuet appeals to the liturgy of the Church, thus connecting the very practical issue of the teachings of individual theologians with the timeless liturgy of the Church, which is ever the Rule and Preserver of the Faith. Since the founders of heresy had been named in liturgical formularies and oaths (“I reject the heresy of Arius”, for example), it is evident that, in this example, Arius must actually teach the heresy attributed to him. Furthermore, the practice of removing these persons from communion indicates that these individuals must actually be guilty of teaching the things they are accused of – otherwise, the Church’s censure of excommunication for heretics makes no sense and has no teeth.

This is enough for now…next time we’ll see how the controversy escalated, the lull brought about by the peace of Pope Clement IX restored peace to the French church, and then how it all blew open again (click here for Part 2!).