The USCCB and the Real Presence

The USCCB has been lamenting the fact that only 1/3 of Catholics in the United States believe in the Real Presence, according to a recent PEW survey. Lifesite News published a great article about how the faithful, when the bishops asked how to remedy this, overwhelmingly suggested a return to traditional practices. 

It is really frustrating to see the shoulder shrugging of the bishops on this question. I don't know if their "let's ask the faithful" was an attempted display of humility—like when Pope Francis asked for the prayers of the people at his papal election—but it comes across as desperate and grasping for straws: like the financial manager of a failing investment firm emailing his clients and saying, "I don't know guys, I'm stumped...anyone here got any investment ideas?" 

As long as I have been following affairs in the American Church (around 2002), the failure of U.S. bishops to sufficiently promote traditional piety has always been infuriating to me. Sure, some of the better ones may give lip-service to traditional liturgical practices and devotions, but when it actually comes to using their authority to do something, very few will. Even my own bishop—who celebrates the Traditional Latin Mass and has been a relatively good pastor compared to others in this country—has done very little in way of actually changing anything at the parish level.

An individual bishop has broad authority over the celebration of the sacred mysteries within his diocese. The General Instruction of the Roman Missal says:

"The diocesan Bishop, who is to be regarded as the high priest of his flock, and from whom the life in Christ of the faithful under his care in a certain sense derives and upon whom it depends, must promote, regulate, and be vigilant over the liturgical life in his diocese. It is to him that in this Instruction is entrusted the regulating of the discipline of concelebration (cf. nos. 202, 374) and the establishing of norms regarding the function of serving the priest at the altar (cf. no. 107), the distribution of Holy Communion under both kinds (cf. no. 283), and the construction and ordering of churches (cf. no. 291). With him lies responsibility above all for fostering the spirit of the sacred Liturgy in the priests, deacons, and faithful" (GIRM 387).

Let us unpack this a bit.

The bishop establishes norms for who may assist the priest at the altar; if we look at GIRM 107, cited above, the bishop has total discretion over who may serve as acolyte, lector, cantor, sacristan, and extraordinary minister of Holy Communion and in general regulate the conduct of all who serve at the altar or handle Holy Communion. If he wished, a bishop could do the following:

• Direct all who serve the altar to reverence the Eucharist with a genuflection (instead of a bow) unless they are physically incapable of doing so.
• Phase out female altar servers and return to male-only servers, as Fr. Joseph Illo did in San Francisco.
• Mandate that all servers wear the cassock.
• Direct cantors and scholas within his diocese to use only traditional chants during communion, as well as avoid any hymns which refer to the Eucharist as "bread and wine" or speak of the altar as a "table."
• Do away with EMHC, or at least reduce their ranks or offer stricter guidelines of when they can be utilized.

GIRM 283 says "The diocesan Bishop may establish norms for Communion under both kinds for his own diocese." In theory, a bishop could go back to a more traditional practice of reception whereby communion under both kinds is reserved for special occasions or communities. Apart from any supernatural considerations, merely making the reception of communion under both species rarer, as well as restricting who may handle the sacred species, would psychologically elevate the importance of Holy Communion in the minds of the faithful—and that is before we even begin to consider the graces that would come through such changes.

But I think the individual bishop's greatest mechanism for using his authority to promote Eucharistic piety is found in GIRM 291, which gives the bishop authority over "the construction and ordering of Churches." GIRM 291 says:

"For the proper construction, restoration, and remodeling of sacred buildings, all who are involved in the work are to consult the diocesan commission on the sacred Liturgy and sacred Art. The diocesan Bishop, moreover, should use the counsel and help of this commission whenever it comes to laying down norms on this matter, approving plans for new buildings, and making decisions on the more important issues."

So the bishop, through his diocesan commission on liturgy and sacred art, can lay down norms for how churches are to be constructed or remodeled and can even mandate that all such plans must be personally approved by himself. The implications of this are astounding when you think of it. Any bishop could:

• Create a diocesan commission on liturgy and sacred art whose members are all wholly committed to the restoration of Eucharistic piety and make this the matrix through which they view all changes to church structures.
• Direct all parishes to replace table altars with wall altars suitable for ad orientem celebration.
• Mandate all tabernacles be placed in the center of the sanctuary.
• Approve only sacred art that is traditional and tasteful.
• Establish certain norms for the appearance and materials of sacred objects such as altars, ambos, etc. that ensure a traditional aesthetic.
• Prohibit the use of "Resurrectifixes" in parish sanctuaries.
• Decree that every parish must have—and utilize—a functional altar rail.
• Only allow traditional stained glass windows, not weird 1960's Pablo Picasso looking window images.
• Mandate all parishes must have pews with kneelers; no more chairs.
• Approve only those renovations which are based on some sort of traditional design (i.e., no more space ship churches).
• Establish a fund for the express purpose of helping less well-off parishes pay for the most important restorations.
• Decree that all monstrances meet certain artistic standards and aren't ugly, modern looking objects.

And these are only considering the prerogatives that flow from a bishop's specific authority over church buildings and those who serve at the altar. If we step back and look at a bishop's general competency over his flock as pastor of the diocese, he has even more opportunities. He could:

• Celebrate his own Masses in the cathedral in such a way that offers the faithful an exemplary model of Eucharistic piety.
• Insist on these norms when he travels and celebrates Masses in the parishes of his diocese.
• Go on a tour of all his parishes promoting Eucharistic adoration and Eucharistic chapels.
• Call for more Eucharistic processions as well as preside over more of them personally.
• Hire individuals in the offices of religious education and catechesis who are committed to the truths of the Eucharist and promoting Eucharistic piety and decree that all such catechists working in parishes be committed to a similar vision—and encourage and back up pastors to dismiss such catechists as do not affirm these things.
• Ensure that proper Eucharistic doctrine is taught in diocesan seminaries; forbid the use of such texts as question or belittle the understanding of the Eucharist.
• Make Eucharistic adoration a regular, structured part of the formation of seminary candidates and in general instill in seminarians a love for the Holy Eucharist. 

Now, thus far we have only considered what an individual bishop can accomplish. But the initial complain we twere evaluating came from the USCCB, the national episcopal conference of the United States. When we look at what a national episcopal conference has the authority to do, the scope of episcopal negligence becomes more appalling. GIRM 390 says:

It is up to the Conferences of Bishops to decide on the adaptations indicated in this General Instruction and in the Order of Mass and, once their decisions have been accorded the recognitio of the Apostolic See, to introduce them into the Missal itself. These adaptations include

• The gestures and posture of the faithful (cf. no. 43);

• The gestures of veneration toward the altar and the Book of the Gospels (cf. no. 273);

• The texts of the chants at the entrance, at the presentation of the gifts, and at Communion (cf. nos. 48, 74, 87);

• The readings from Sacred Scripture to be used in special circumstances (cf. no. 362);

• The form of the gesture of peace (cf. no. 82);

• The manner of receiving Holy Communion (cf. nos. 160, 283);

• The materials for the altar and sacred furnishings, especially the sacred vessels, and also the materials, form, and color of the liturgical vestments (cf. nos. 301, 326, 329, 339, 342-346).

Directories or pastoral instructions that the Conferences of Bishops judge useful may, with the prior recognitio of the Apostolic See, be included in The Roman Missal at an appropriate place.

This is extremely broad. The USCCB could call for universal communion on the tongue and kneeling. In such places where the Missal says standing or kneeling are acceptable, they could mandate kneeling. The could ordain a specific set of approved chants for Holy Communion. According to the last bullet point, the USCCB could direct that only traditional liturgical vessels and vestments be used.

Now, of course, all of this has to be approved by the Holy See with the Apostolic recognitio if it were to actually be incorporated into the GIRM in use in the United States, and who knows how that would go. But that's beside the point; the fact is, they have never even tried.

This is why the episcopal hand-wringing over "What can we do about Catholics' lagging belief in the Real Presence?" doesn't arouse my sympathy. The contemporary American hierarchy has made no effort to solve the problem because they are too dependent upon the masses of quasi-believing Catholics to keep the diocesan apparatus functional—and they fear the backlash of what would happen should they try to actually change things. And so nothing happens, and they wonder why the problem persists; to again quote Ned Flanders' parents, "We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas."

Let us pray for our bishops, that they will find the courage to do what needs to be done and trust in God to give the increase where man has sown and watered.

Chesterton's Cause is Dead

This week his Excellency Bishop Peter Doyle of Northampton, U.K. announced that he would not be opening a Cause for the beatification of G.K. Chesterton. The bishop listed three reasons, two of which are excellent and the third of which is nonsense:

"That conclusion is that I am unable to promote the cause of GK Chesterton for three reasons. Firstly, and most importantly, there is no local cult. Secondly, I have been unable to tease out a pattern of personal spirituality. And, thirdly, even allowing for the context of G K Chesterton’s time, the issue of anti-Semitism is a real obstacle particularly at this time in the United Kingdom" (source).

I want to address these concerns one at a time before offering my own opinion on the matter.

The first reason given by Bishop Boyle is lack of a local cult. This is actually one of the best reasons to not advance a candidate to the altars. Remember that the entire process of canonization is supposed to begin with the existence of a stable local cultus. The process of canonization is essentially supposed to take that cultus as a starting point for proposing that the candidate's cultus be extended to the Church Universal (for an extensive study on this, please see our article "Canonization and the Early Church"). The lack of any local cultus really is an exceptionally strong reason a person should not be advanced to regional or universal veneration. A universal cultus is proposed to the faithful based on the existence of a stable underlying local cultus. And it makes clear that Chesterton's universal popularity does not equate to a religious cultus. So I absolutely approve of this rationale.

The second reason given is that the bishop was "unable to tease out any pattern or personal spirituality." My goodness, if this isn't a great reason for not opening someone's Cause, I don't know what is. I have to say, based on his writings and based on what I know of his life, GKC never struck me as a man with a disciplined spiritual life. He struck me as incredibly insightful, capable of perceiving profound beauty, and of elucidating timeless truths in a manner unparalleled, but he never struck me as a personally holy man. His writings are treasured beyond question; but if we are considering him for sainthood, then I am more interested in questions like how often did he go to confession? How often did he pray? What kinds of penances did he do? Did he go to daily Mass? Adoration? What were his personal devotions like? Was his spiritual life orderly? What was his spiritual reading like? Did people who knew him consider him holy—not just good-natured, jovial, or charitable, but holy? And here the man in charge of investigating GKC says that he can't find any pattern of personal spirituality. If that's true, then that's a pretty darn good reason for not proposing Chesterton for veneration. Have we lowered the bar so much that a person who has no pattern of personal spirituality is considered a good candidate for sainthood?

I often hear proponents of Chesterton's sainthood arguing that his profound writings are sufficient evidence for his sanctity. "His insights are astonishing! What more proof do we need?" This reasoning is naive. Way back in 2009 I wrote an article on Chesterton's beatification ("Blessed GK Chesterton?"), and even then I had reservations due to the fact that people were tending to misunderstand the nature of sanctity, substituting instead the idea of a Chesterton as a "role model" and citing Chesterton's writings in lieu of any evidence of real holiness. Ten years ago I said:

I appreciate the praise of Chesterton's work, but a beatification is about the man, not is work. I once heard (I think on EWTN, maybe on some Catholic Radio station) a certain lay apologist make the errant claim that St. Thomas Aquinas was canonized solely by virtue of his writings and not because of his personal holiness. Anyone who has studied the canonization proceedings of any saints from the 13th or 14th centuries knows that everything revolves around personal sanctity. Saying Chesterton was innocent and humble, and then going on to praise his writing, is really not enough for me to jump on the bandwagon, however much I love Chesterton...

I love G.K. Chesterton. His writings have moved me profoundly and have been very formative in my intellectual and spiritual development, both when I was a young man and to this day. Furthermore, I know countless souls who have similarly benefited from his works. But the writings do not the whole man make. This is about supernatural virtue, not profound writings. It does not matter whether it is Chesterton, or Cardinal Newman, Fulton Sheen, Mother Teresa or Paul VI. We should not be afraid of asking questions about these people, because ultimately we want God to be glorified, and God is glorified by true sanctity, not by papering over or dismissing valid objections. (source)

Now, the third reason the bishop gives is a nonsense reason. The issue of "anti-Semitism", which he goes on to say is a "real obstacle particularly at this time in the United Kingdom." With this comment, he is admitting that this might not have been an obstacle in another time or place, but because of the current socio-political climate with its endemic political correctness, Chesterton's comments on Jews—even understood in the context of their time—make him persona non grata in the milieu of modern, hypersensitive 21st century Britain. This is especially ridiculous because we expect a beatification or canonization to be about the objective state of a person and whether or not they can be considered holy and worthy of veneration. When the bishop cites things like the current sensitivity level in a specific country, he is moving the discussion from the objective realm to one of pure subjectivity. Is Chesterton a saint or not? Depends on the zeitgeist I guess. So I think this argument is a bad one. And I don't believe Chesterton was actually anti-Semitic. But the bishop thought opening his Cause might upset some Jewish Brits. So there it is.

Interestingly enough, the bishop did not bring up what I consider to be another good argument against Chesterton's canonization, and one that was discussed a lot a few years back—namely, Chesterton's famous intemperance with food and drink. No, I am not saying that just because he was large. No, I am not saying this because he smoked and drank liquor. I am saying this simply because existing biographical accounts present him as a man who lacked temperance when it came to food and drink. Now, I know there is going to be some ignorant commentator who says, "Uhhhhh...yeah but St. Thomas Aquinas was overweight...duhhhhh." THIS. IS. NOT. ABOUT. CHESTERTON'S. WEIGHT. I do not look at an overweight person and go, "Ugh, they must be intemperate." Weight may be an indication of intemperance, but cannot establish it. Rather, this is about the well-documented anecdotes of his intemperate and even gluttonous behavior when it came to food and alcohol.

Back in 2014, I wrote an article about this ("This is Not About Chesterton"); a person who lacks a fundamental cardinal virtue cannot be considered saintly, and based on the extant biographical and anecdotal evidence about Chesterton, the man certainly did not possess temperance when it came to food and drink. Or if he did possess it, it was certainly not in a heroic degree. I wrote then:

"Remember, a saint possesses not only natural virtue, but supernatural virtue. This means, of course, faith, hope and charity to a heroic degree, but it also means that even the saint's natural virtues are elevated and oriented towards supernatural ends. For example, a virtuous man has formed the habit of prudence, which is the virtue of being able to identify and pursue the good in particular circumstances; i..e, of making good decisions. The saintly man, however, not only exercises natural prudence, but also demonstrates supernatural prudence; i.e., the virtue of prudence ordered towards supernatural ends, meaning exceptional discernment and good sense in spiritual matters.

Now, since supernatural virtue is a requisite of sainthood, and since grace builds on the natural virtues, it follows that a person who lacks even one of natural cardinal virtues cannot be "saintly" in the strict sense. Natural virtue is the foundation of supernatural virtue; if a natural virtue is obviously lacking, they cannot possess the supernaturalized version of that virtue which is built upon the natural. We may still have an exceptionally virtuous person, but nevertheless one with a major defect that makes it inappropriate to classify them as a saint. A person certainly cannot possess supernatural temperance if they lack even the natural virtue of temperance" (source).

I recommend reading the above cited article in its entirety as a background to this essay. Needless to say, my own position on this matter is that G.K. Chesterton, regardless of his indisputably brilliant writings, is not a suitable candidate for sainthood. I think Bishop Peter Boyle made the correct call in refusing to open a Cause, even if one of his reasons was specious. And I think people who want to ignore this and push through with a GKC canonization need to step back and consider all these matters and actually address them rather than just dismissing them. This isn't about ramming through "our guy." I adore GKC. He was an exceptional man and one of the greatest English writers ever. But not a saint. You don't need to be saintly to be a great writer. All you need to be is...a great writer. Heck, I'm no shabby writer myself, but that doesn't mean I'm an upstanding, exemplary Catholic. I'm just a so-so Catholic who happens to be good at explaining things. Get that concept through your heads.

Some objections:

"You can't trust a modernist bishop like Boyle to make the right call."

I know nothing about Boyle, but the fact is it's his call to make. And if God wants this to happen, then it will happen someday, regardless of Bishop Boyle. Also, you can't complain about the laxity of modern canonizations and then simultaneously complain that in this case the bishop was too strict with his criterion. To do so makes it look like we are only complaining about canonizations we don't like, which is what most Trads do, to be honest. "We mistrust modern canonizations, unless they are of someone we approve of." Are the canonization criteria too strict, or aren't they? If they're not strict enough, then you should rejoice that they screened out GKC. If they're already too strict, then that applies for Paul VI and John Paul II and Romero as well and these candidates all legitimately passed muster.

"It's just because Chesterton smoked and smoking is bad now."

No, the bishop doesn't mention that at all. Actually deal with the arguments put forward instead of obfuscating them.

"Oh, so you don't think G.K. Chesterton should be canonized but you accept the canonizations of men like Paul VI?"

Irrelevant. This is about GKC, not whomever else was canonized. Also, Paul VI is already canonized, while GKC never even made it to a beatus, so they are certainly in two different categories. And when Paul VI was not yet canonized I argued against his canonization as well. The fact that Paul VI made it to canonization is no argument that GKC should.

"Saints aren't perfect."

They are certainly not. But too often we can use this phrase to basically drop all standards. Saints are not 'perfect.' They do have sin. But, while they are not perfect, a saint is someone we expect to have attained a degree of victory over their sin. While I would never argue that saints must be sinless, I would also argue that a person who has capitulated to sin in one aspect of their life should not be considered a saint. Saints are those who, while having sin like all of us, labor to attain victory over that sin. There are compelling arguments to suggest that Chesterton fundamentally failed in his battle against drunkenness and gluttony, which signifies a lack of temperance. If this were true, Chesterton did not have victory over these vices but rather succumbed to them—they may even have contributed to his death (see also: "Saints Aren't Perfect", USC, 2013).

Bottom line is we can respect and laud and honor Catholic heroes without insisting that they be canonized. It is good that Bishop Boyle refused to open Chesterton's Cause because he really was not a saintly man. An exemplary writer? A light in the darkness? A bold apologist? Absolutely to all three. A saint? It does not appear so.

The Church Doesn't Need More Women's Involvement

One of the sacred cows of liberal Catholicism is the unwavering belief that the Church is dominated by men and that women are voiceless and passive in an institution run by the patriarchy. To that end, there are endless proposals being tossed about to get women "more involved" in some sort of "official" capacity. There is always talk about utilizing the particular "gifts" women have to offer the Church and how much we will all benefit by hearing the woman's "voice", et al.

There's always this recurring idea about a female diaconate (by the way, for an excellent theological explanation of why this cannot be, please see Fr. Ripperger's article On the Unity of Holy Orders). We're going to see a lot of this nonsense being bandied about at the upcoming Amazon Synod; the Pre-Amazon Synod meeting in Rome spoke of the "the indispensable mission that women have", and the document "urges the Church to identify the type of official ministry that can be conferred on women." Now these comments were made solely with reference to the Amazon, but that doesn't really matter; we all know the end game is to shoe-horn women into an official ministerial role as a means of eventually force-feeding women's ordination to the entire Church.

A while ago I was traveling and compelled to attend a random Novus Ordo parish to fulfill my Sunday obligation. As I sat there during the Mass, I watched the procession of young, female altar servers preceding the elderly priest into the sanctuary. I listened to the readings done by female lectors. The organ was played by a female organist, the hymns and psalms sung by a female cantor. Two young girls brought up the gifts at the offertory. During the announcements he mentioned the religious education program, whose director was a woman. He thanked a female parishioner for organizing the floral arrangements around the altar. At communion time, two female EMHCs distributed the sacrament along with the priest. After Mass, I looked at the congregation and wondered how many men I saw would be attending Mass of their own volition if their wives were not dragging them there—in how many homes was the woman the functional spiritual leader of the family?

I later visited the parish website and saw that the organizers or contact persons for 10 of the 19 ministries listed on the website were women—even for the Knights of Columbus, which  found bizarre. Only two ministries had male contacts; the rest just said "Call the office", where no doubt the inquirer would be put in contact with a female secretary. And children attending CCD classes would most likely be taught by female catechists.

And in all my years as a Catholic I can say with confidence that this situation is normative in most parishes. When I was a Youth Director and DRE, I remember going to a meeting of all the DREs in the diocese and I was one of only three men. The rest were all middle aged (or elderly) women. I have noticed a similar trend among parish Youth Directors. The same is true for the moribund National Catholic Youth Ministry organization: according to their site, 57% of the national leadership of the National Catholic Youth Ministry organization is female, including their executive director. Women are broadly represented in the regional chairs of the NCYM (43%) and hold 75% of the at-large chairs. You may like Catholic youth ministry, you may hate it, but either way the fact is it is dominated by women.

This experience really made me stop and ponder, in what sense can anybody claim that women are underrepresented in the Catholic Church? Anyone who walked into an average Catholic parish and got involved to any degree would get the impression of a Church completely run by women. Women already dominate the Church at almost every level. If you add to this the prevalence of women in Catholic education, the ratio of women to men becomes staggering. 

And it's not just at the parochial and academic level. At our dioceses as well women are broadly represented, usually at or far above their societal demographic. According to the staff director of my diocese, 50% of the diocesan staff are women. A very fair representation of the general demographic! However, if you remove the ordained from the equation and look only at laypeople, the percentage of women working in the diocese rises to 60%. In other words, 6 out of every 10 lay people involved in administering the diocese are women. They represent a majority of the lay folks currently managing the diocese. Women are running the place.

Please tell me how women are underrepresented? How their voices are suppressed? The average Catholic is going to hear the Word of God read by a woman, worship to music played and sang by women, have their kids catechized by women, probably receive communion from a woman, deal with women in parish and diocesan administration, and interact primarily with women volunteers and employees at all levels of Church.  In many places, deacon's wives are also elevated to an unofficial, semi-ministerial role in "couples ministry" with their husbands, so Catholics often receive baptismal or marriage prep from women. But I guess because there is one, statistically tiny office women are excluded from—the ordained—then they are completely oppressed. 

Even among the ordained, however, women are not without their influence. I don't want to be too particular so I will stay to vague generalizations here—but even in the priesthood I have noticed that parish priests who are surrounded by women staff are often completely cucked by them.

Several years ago, I was traveling up the coast of California visiting the old mission parishes ahead of the canonization of St. Junipero Serra. I visited the lovely mission of San Antonio de Padua, the only one of the missions where I felt a spirit of genuine Catholic piety was still alive. Within the old church there was a mural painted in the early 19th century. It depicted a priest (perhaps Fr. Serra) posing at the altar with several of his servers and other eminent men of the mission. In the late Rococo style, the figures are all looking out of the painting at the viewer. The priest has rugged, hard features and a dark beard. The servers are all robust young men with dark eyes and evidently Spanish or Mexican, some of them sporting beards or pointed mustaches. They are all kneeling in white surplices with ornate lace trimming, hands folded. There are also a few men in secular dress, apparently landowners or local magistrates, wearing sashes and holding swords. All of them are standing or kneeling before the altar, looking out, a half dozen or so. It really struck me what a manly enterprise Catholicism was at that time and place—looking at this old portrait, I could clearly grasp its appeal and why men of that time would have wanted to be part of this.

This is nothing against women by any means. I'm not one of those "back to the kitchen" Catholic men. But my friends, the crusade to "finally" get women "involved" is a farce. Women are pretty much already running the show at every level; at least they are heavily represented to such a degree that nobody can sincerely argue that the Church is excluding women from involvement. The Church is already inundated with women. We don't need more women involvement. If anything, we need more male involvement. It is men who vanished from Catholic administration, schools, parish life, and liturgical service as servers, cantors, etc. And many of our priests, if they are not part of the homosexual clique, are far too effeminate. A entire gender has been silently atrophied away while progressives lament that the atrophy has not been extreme enough.

A Church without the active engagement of an entire gender is a Church on life support. Our Lord requested that we pray for vocations by asking God to send workers into His harvest; these days we need to pray also for the much more basic petition that one of the two human sexes merely shows up. What times indeed.

Duodecimus Anniversarius

Good heavens...has it been twelve years!? Indeed it has; twelve years of blogging here at Unam Sanctam Catholicam, my friends. It was June 29, 2007 when this blog was launched. I was a young man working as a Director of Religious Education at a parish in the Diocese of Lansing. I remember for some time I had been frustrated with what I was experiencing in the churches around where I lived. I was baptized Catholic as a child but had no faith formation; I returned to the Church in 2002, receiving my First Communion at the tender age of 22. 

But over the next few years I started to realize that the Church I had studied and prayed my way back into did not look the same as the Church I was experiencing on the ground in parish life. I had read about all the "riches" supposedly unlocked by the Second Vatican Council, but was extremely disappointed that the most vibrant aspects of the Church's tradition were notably lacking from parish life. Why was there such a paucity of Latin? Why was I hearing contemporary guitar music or Protestant hymns instead of Gregorian chant? Why were so many homilies so wimpy on Catholic dogma? Why did those in charge of the Church seem to lax when it came to promoting the Gospel? And most alarmingly of all, why did so many Catholics seem uninterested in their spiritual heritage?

When I returned to full communion with the Church in 2002, I had just kind of assumed that the Church I'd read about in my studies still existed. But by 2005ish there was a kind of disquiet and spiritual rut I was in. I couldn't quite put my finger on it. But it almost felt like a conspiracy...a conspiracy of silence about the Church's history and customs. As if traditional Catholicism was that one relative that we don't talk about because he's in prison. I remember 2005 was my senior year of my undergrad and that year I had completed a historical research project on the Second Vatican Council. I had studied the actual daybooks of the Council and read the interventions and came across the story of Cardinal Ottaviani's microphone being disconnected. This led me to Ralph Wiltgen's The Rhine Flows Into the Tiber, which was really the point where I started to realize what happened in  Rome in 1962-1965 was more revolutionary than I had hitherto understood.

But the transformative moment came in June of 2007 when I was hired as a DRE and had the privilege of reconnecting with Dr. John Joy, who at the time was not Dr. Joy but just a young dude working for the Church and preparing to go study abroad with his family. John and I had been friends back from our days at Ave Maria College and managed to catch up. John helped me understand that what I was really missing was the vital connection that any serious Catholic needs to the Church's tradition. He gave me a copy of Msgr. Klaus Gamber's book Reform of the Roman Liturgy, as well as Michael Davies' Liturgical Timebombs. He also introduced me to other valuable works like Msgr. George Agius' Tradition and the Church and the works the the Dominican theologian Servais Pinckaers on Christian ethics and the morality of happiness. Understand, before I was introduced to these authors I had primarily been reading Jimmy Akin and Scott Hahn sort of books, which, while having some value, left me profoundly undernourished. These works John introduced me to had a very profound effect on my thinking and helped me to crystallize some things in my head that hitherto had been vague, unformed sentiment. They helped me really reconnect with the foundations of the Catholic faith and understand more about what my spirit was lacking and where to find it.

But John also did something equally formative—he introduced me to blogging. It being 2007, I still did not have the Internet in my house so I was oblivious to he existence of a traditional Catholic blogosphere, which in those days was still in an inchoate, latent phase of development. But John introduced me to three blogs: the New Liturgical Movement, Rorate Caeli, and a particularly entertaining blog run by some eccentric crank out on the west coast called Athanasius Contra Mundum. 

Learning of the existence of traditional Catholic blogs was revolutionary. See, before I started reading them, I was under the impression that my own frustrations with contemporary Catholicism were more of a matter of personal taste. I did not realize that there was a rather substantial sub-group within Catholicism who felt the same, and not as a matter of mere sentiment, but as a coherent, alternate vision for what the Church could and ought to be, grounded in its history and traditions and faithful to its own charism.

In other words, I realized I was not alone.

And then I was like, "Imma blog also."

And so, here I am, 12 years later, with 1,808 essays and 3.5 million pageviews across two different sites under my belt, still rolling with this weird hobby of mine—and pleasantly surprised that so many of you are still along for the journey.

God bless you all, blessed Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul, and prayers for another year of blogging!

Book Review: Infiltration by Taylor Marshall

A few days ago, when I spoke negatively about Dr. Taylor Marshall's book Infiltration on this blog's Facebook page, people responded with hostility, confusion, and consternation. Dr. Marshall's book purports to offer a causal explanation for the current crisis in the Church. It invokes Freemasonry, Fatima, Paul VI, and a whole slew of subjects important to traditional Catholics. Why speak poorly of the work, then? The man is doing a good thing for the Church; why knock it? Is this more of the  "circular firing squad" dynamic at work?

What is said is important, but how it is said matters quite a bit as well. When one is making certain historical assertions, this becomes desperately important. Cause and effect need to be clearly and indisputably linked by well-documented and universally accepted sources. The scholarly threshold is high. You can certainly publish a historical work where cause and effect are  not clearly demonstrated, where allegations are not documented thoroughly, where sources are questionable or non-existent—but what you have is not a work of history, but of gossip or innuendo.

Unfortunately, Infiltration is a work full of innuendo. It would be tedious to expand upon every unsubstantiated innuendo Dr. Marshall presents as fact; below I am posting a review from my friend Kevin Tierney who writes on this site occasionally. His review gets to the point much more lucidly and quickly than anything I would write. But I do want to expand upon what I mean by "innuendo" and why I think books like Infiltration are ultimately harmful to the traditionalist cause.

An historical argument by innuendo will usually start with a predetermined assertion and then try to prove it by appealing to causal factors which, taken on their own, do not rise to the threshold of establishing a certain cause and effect relationship. The author typically knows this but, rather than admitting the connection is tenuous, the author tries to bolster his claims by resorting to innuendo in lieu of actual facts. A classic example of this is well known historical sensationalist and journalist Graham Hancock, author of such books as Fingerprints of the Gods about Atlantis. Or we could take his book The Sign and the Seal on the Ark of the Covenant. In this book, Hancock opines that we really don't know what was inside the Ark, but points out that ancient cultures used to worship meteorites. He also speculates that a radioactive meteorite could have caused some of the effects we read about in the Old Testament associated with the Ark (e.g., making Moses "glow", killing people who touched it, etc). Now, does Mr. Hancock have any proof that the Ark contained a radioactive meteorite? Of course not. Could such an assertion ever be proven? Most likely not. But that is not going to stop Hancock from simply "throwing it out there" and then moving forward with his line of argumentation with the latent assumption that this implication is trustworthy. In essence, he makes a radically unverifiable statement, shrugs and says "maybe", but then moves ahead anyway on the working assumption that the hypothesis is correct, creating the illusion that an argument has been made when really only an innuendo was proffered.

In Dr. Marshall's Infiltration, you will see many such arguments. You will see the Siri Thesis rehashed, with no proof other than to retell the story because "legend says." Paul VI is alleged to be an Alinskyite on the premise that Cardinal Montini and Saul Alinsky were mutual associates of Jacques Maritain. It is asserted that John XXIII was referring to the children of Fatima when he referenced "prophets of doom", even though Marshall offers no proof of this and despite the fact there are many other more plausible explanations. He reports that Paul VI was a sodomite, on no evidence other than retelling the gossip of French diplomat Roger Peyerfitte who says he knows of an actor who said he had a homosexual relationship with Paul VI. In other words, it is pure hearsay. Marshall is just reporting what other people gossip about. It's historical writing of the shoddiest form. Tabloid material.

I like Dr. Taylor Marhsall. I'm happy he has gravitated more towards the traditionalist camp. And I know people will inevitably say that myself or Mr. Tierney are harming the traditional cause by ripping this book. On the contrary, it is the existence of books like Infiltration which do damage to the traditionalist cause by making us look like a bunch of conspiracy theorists for whom a certain narrative is more important than the facts. It's highly likely that anyone I gave this book to in hopes of convincing them of our cause would walk away shaking their head. I don't deny the book is entertaining and engaging; but as history, it's a huge fail. And please don't tell me "He's just trying to do a good work for the Church." We can't play loose with the truth in service of the truth. When I was in college, I wrote a paper on the Protestant Reformation for my history class. It was a blistering critique of the Lutheran movement. I thought my professor, a militant Catholic, would heartily approve of it. Instead he lambasted it ruthlessly. My citations didn't prove what I said they proved. Connections I inferred were not sufficiently demonstrated. Too much reliance on secondary sources and not enough on primary. He ripped it to shreds. It didn't matter that I was "trying to do a good thing for the Church." And he was right to destroy it. The scholarship of that paper was garbage. Its shoddy reasoning and weak citations were actually more damaging to Catholicism than supportive of it. And that's always been my approach as well. You can show me a book that argues 100% in line with things I believe, but if it's scholarship and citations are sloppy I'm still going to say it's bunk. Even if I happen to agree with a lot of Taylor Marshall's conclusions, he offers no compelling reason why I ought to believe them.

Well, that's enough for my introduction. I guess I should actually get to Kevin's review.

Review of Dr. Taylor Marhsall's Infiltration: The Plot to Destroy the Church from Within by Kevin Tierney

How does one explain the crisis in the modern Church? This is a subject that has taken up endless amounts of discussion. After this review, we will spend even more hours, but God willing, not too many. During that time, in addition to discussing the root causes of the crisis, we will discuss how present these problems, and what one can do to solve them. In having that discussion, a wide variety of viewpoints will be presented.

Taylor Marshall has given his own viewpoint in Infilitration: The Plot to Destroy the Church From Within. This is a 250 page work with 50 pages of appendices, in addition to a glowing foreword by Bishop Athanasius Schneider. By appearances alone, this is a serious and sober book. Yet as with many things, appearances are deceiving. Infiltration fails as a serious and sober look at the problems facing the Catholic Church. More importantly, the ways in which it fail can have real consequences for how that crisis is perceived, and for those who advocate it along these lines.

Yet in reviewing this work, we must be careful. We must avoid being like Dr. Jeffrey Mirus, whose review of Infiltration was less a review on the book and more on his belief that Taylor Marshall is a moron. There is no valley so low to which Mirus will not stoop in his quest to insult Dr. Marshall, no pettiness he will not engage in to further his belief that Marshall is a crazy uncle. Sadly, many people have picked up on this review, and are promoting it. While this no doubt makes them feel good and superior, I doubt its actually reaching anyone who has actually read the book, or who isn’t absolutely certain of the intellectual capacity (or lack thereof) of Dr. Marshall. In this review, I want to avoid those pitfalls. This is a bad book, but we need to explain why exactly it is bad, even if you agree with the authors overall conclusions about there being a modernist crisis in the Church.

A PARANOID MANIFESTO

In his rejection of a certain theological position, Marshall says he rejects it because it “does not present a consistent theological narrative” for the present crisis. For Marshall, the narrative is what matters above all else. The narrative about the crisis matters more than the actual crisis, which is almost secondary. Unlike most traditionalist polemics, Infiltration spends a shockingly small amount of time talking about the problems the Church faces. Instead, he is concerned most with telling you what the cause of these problems are. The cause of these problems are a hyper-organized and almost omniscient cabal of secret societies (the Carbonari, Freemasons, the Sankte Gallen Mafia, among many others) carefully and calmly putting together a plan to take over and subvert the Church. The blueprint of this plan is the Permanent Instruction of the Alta Vendita, written in 1859. Marshall’s job is to trace a straight line from this document up until 2019, and show how it explains everything about the current crisis.

The problem with conspiracy theories is they adopt an approach of paranoia in their reading of history. In every event, they see otherwise invisible narratives—and if you look hard enough, there are signs of these narratives, signs the author will gladly tell you about if you spend the money for their book. Hence he begins his narrative by asking why lightning struck the Vatican the day Benedict resigned the papacy. Was it connected to the Vatican banking scandal? Was it about sex abuse? Doctrine? To Marshall, that lightning strike means something. To the reader, that strike might also mean something: a weather pattern developed in the earths atmosphere that was conducive to strong storms, and one of them produced a bolt of lightning which struck the Vatican. That possibility is never once mentioned by Marshall.

Another problem is that it gives the enemy far too much credit. That secret societies exist, and that they are often hostile to the Catholic Church is no doubt true. Yet Marshall presents these societies less as the dangerous threat that they are, and more as cartoonish supervillains who are all powerful, hyper organized and disciplined, and every action done is followed verbatim by a plan written 160 years ago. Anyone who has studied the history of these societies for even a second will be skeptical of this. The movements of secret societies and radicalism spends just as much time knifing each other as they do trying to attack their common enemy. They splinter into factions upon factions. If anything, that’s what makes the assault on the Church so difficult from these groups: it is highly decentralized. Even today you could excommunicate and jail every member of the Sankte Gallen Mafia (the liberal group that by their own admission and boasting were the ones who lobbied and organized for Pope Francis during the recent conclave), and the crisis would continue without missing a beat. The problem isn’t so much a central playbook they are following, as there are a bunch of highly motivated individuals whose only thing they agree upon is a disdain and loathing for tradition and the Gospel.

HABITUAL LOGIC LEAPING

For Dr. Marshall, one of the biggest problems the Church faced was the loss of the Papal States.  For a variety of reasons (although not important enough to elucidate in great detail in the book), the Papal States are central to everything.  It goes without saying that Dr. Marshall would not be happy about the Lateran treaty which gave rise to the modern Vatican City and the protection of the city from outside threats, in exchange for the pope relinquishing claims on everything else that comprised the Papal States.  The absurd assumptions that follow upon this are legion: for example, did you know that Ambrogio Ratti took the papal name Pius XI to rebuke his two predecessors named Pius?  Did you know that he took the name explicitly because he would solve the tensions with Italy that they failed?  And did you know that this Lateran treaty unleashed a demonic army that infiltrated the Vatican, culminating in the pontificate of Pope Francis, a Masonic Manchurian Candidate?  This is all just fluff; Marshall nowhere gives evidence that Ratti chose Pius XI as a slight towards his predecessors, or that Pius XI viewed himself as repudiating their failed policies.  He takes frequent leaps of logic to arrive at these conclusions.  He’s a habitual logic leaper.  Often, it is harmless.  Other times, he says things like the following:

Flanked by representatives of Eastern Orthodoxy and Protestantism, Pope John Paul II opened the Jubilee Year of 2000. One year later, he would be diagnosed with Parikson’s disease and begin his slow, painful descent into death (Infiltration, pg. 192).

Now, maybe God really did punish John Paul II with Parkinsons for mistakes regarding ecumenism. I would be very careful in writing that opinion in public though. As in, don’t write that in public. It's unprovable and a tremendous leap of logic; yet Marshall seems to imply a causal relation here that the reader is invited to uncritically accept.

BIASED REPORTING
             

In addition to seeking out the emanations of penumbras of various events in the Church, Dr. Marshall will also inform the readers of various theological controversies. Yet the way he does so is, quite frankly, fundamentally dishonest. In discussing “infiltration” of the Sacred Liturgy, he states his belief that the prayer “for our dearly departed… and all who died in your friendship” you hear during one of the Eucharistic Prayers is “seen” as promoting universal salvation. Nowhere does he mention who sees this, and where they record that view. Nowhere does he state if he agrees with that view or not. It is just “seen” by some. Yet for the purposes of his narrative, that “seen” is then treated as a verifiable fact. Elsewhere, he says it is “still debated” whether Vatican II’s decree on religious liberty gives a divine right to engage in idolatry. He nowhere mentions where this is “still debated.” He nowhere mentions what side of the debate he finds himself on. He is simply noting some impersonal passive debate going on somewhere. Yet, for purposes of the narrative, the Church, in a decree from an ecumenical council, gave divine sanction to idolatry. Yet if you press him too hard on this, he will fall back on saying the text “seems to suggest” it, and then just continue onward as if it is undebatable truth. The problem with both is clear: they are very much not established truths. If they are not established, then there’s a real chance his “infiltration” narrative is incorrect. Debating such a mindset is impossible. It is heads he wins, tails you lose. Even if one is disposed to agree with Dr. Marshall's fundamental arguments here, he offers no reason why you should believe them.

Marshall responds to these criticisms by hinting that people are afraid of his work and his conclusions, while other defenders point to the fact Bishop Schneider endorsed the work. That Bishop Schneider endorsed this work is tragic. Yet it is a reminder that staunch doctrinal orthodoxy does not always translate into sound judgement. Just as Christopher West was (wrongly) endorsed by several orthodox bishops, so it is with this work. As far as the conclusions, I am not "afraid" of those conclusions. I have no problem believing that people have tried to undermine the Gospel from within positions of the Church. If you don’t believe that, you haven’t been paying attention the past 50 years.

Yet there is a right way and a wrong way to respond to those conclusions. Sound evidence and logic matters. We must be careful to present the facts as they happen, and when we are engaging in speculation, make clear we are doing so, and make sure that speculation is backed by sound evidence. If we don’t, it becomes far too easy to paint critics as a bunch of crazy reactionaries and as Alex Jones with incense. Nobody is expecting a modern day Iota Unum, a dry manifesto 800 pages long outlining the problems with the Church’s surrender to liberalism. (Yet it is a great book!) We badly need a book outlining in easily readable fashion the problems the Church is facing, and how to confront them. (You see almost nothing in how to confront the problems from Marshall, outside of pious generalities.) Infiltration is not that book.

There's Always a Priest Shortage in Missionary Areas

The ostensible reason the ordination of married "elders" is being discussed for the Amazon is because of a critical priest shortage in the region.

Let us set aside for a moment the fact that the ideologue of the Amazon Synod, Bishop Fritz Lobinger, has stated that the priest shortage is not the real reason for the proposal to ordain married men; let us look at the historical background of "priest shortages" in general.

The Amazon is more or less a missionary region. I do not deny there is a priest shortage there. But there have always been priest shortages in mission areas. How is this a new problem? Mission territories generally don't have the population density or Catholic base to produce a sufficient level of indigenous priests. This is why evangelical efforts in mission countries have typically been spearheaded by foreign priests supported by subscriptions or donations from the faithful in more thoroughly Christianized areas. This is just common sense.

Let's review some history:

• There was a shortage of clergy in Samaria during the Book of Acts; the Bible says even after they had converted there was nobody in the territory to administer Confirmation so the Apostles had to make a trip up to them (Acts 8:14-17).
• There was a shortage of missionary priests willing to go to Ireland prior to it's conversion, even though there were already small bands of Christian Irish living there before St. Patrick.
• There was a shortage of priests in Anglo-Saxon England during the time of its conversion; priests sent from Gaul often times refused to cross the Channel and go over to Britain. Some of St. Augustine of Canterbury's own companions refused to leave Gaul.
• There was a shortage of priests in Germany during the Carolingian era. Missionaries like St. Boniface were constantly sending back to France, Italy, and Britain for more helpers.
• There was a shortage of priests to Asia during the 13th century Mongol period. It was not uncommon for friars sent east to abandon the journey before reaching Mongol territory.
• There was a shortage of priests in Japan during the period of the Christian persecutions. Japanese Catholics went generations without seeing a Catholic priest. 
• There were priest shortages in New Spain (Mexico) for many years until the Spaniards really started coming over en masse. Catholic converts sometimes went a year or more without access to the sacraments. 
• There was a shortage of priests among the Jesuits who evangelized New France. A single priest such as St. Isaac Jogues or Fr. Marquette might be in charge of thousands and thousands of miles of territory.
• There was a shortage of priests on the American frontier for most of the history of the United States. Priests traveled along exceptionally broad circuits, sometimes covering thousands of miles, in order to minister to their flock. Their letters to Europe are full of pleas for more priests to aid them in their work.  

I'm sure we could come up with many more examples. But the point is there have always been priest shortages in mission areas. The situation in the Amazon is absolutely not unique. In none of the situations listed above did anyone in the Church ever seem to think the solution was ordaining married men. Even in the case of New France, where Jesuits were being killed by Iroquois while simultaneously being expected to administer an ecclesial territory the size of Texas, there was no suggestion or ordaining married men, Jesuit novices were still required to put in years and years of training before ordination, and the speedy ordination of indigenous peoples was rejected—even though any one of those could have "solved" the problem by providing more priests to minister to the faithful.

But historically the Church has not viewed this as a problem that you solve by throwing more warm bodies into the grinder. Christendom was not built on the mentality of, "we need someone to do this job...meh, you'll do."

Of course, this is not really about a shortage of priests in the Amazon anyway. But...whatever.

Guest Post: "Revisiting Our Concept of Authority" by Kevin Tierney

Today I am featuring a guest post from my friend and colleague Kevin Tierney on the subject of stepping back and revisiting our attitudes towards authority within the Catholic hierarchy.

Kevin is a writer living in Brighton, Michigan. His works have appeared regularly on Catholic Exchange and other venues. You may follow him on Facebook or Twitter (@catholicsmark).

* * * * *

As the USCCB meets to discuss how best to implement new norms regarding sexual abuse, is everyone ready for the predictable debate about if homosexuality or clericalism are the big problem causing the crisis? I’m not, it’s a tired debate. I also think it can be sidestepped if we go a little deeper. I think that if we want to solve the problems the Church is beset it, its going to require us to go deeper, as uncomfortable as it makes us. I speak of the problems we Catholics have in articulating authority.

Before you reach for your “I would not believe the Gospel if not for the authority of the Catholic Church” (you don’t understand that quote) from Augustine, let’s talk about what authority is.  In most debates today in the Church, “authority” is a question of “who has the power” or “who can compel you to do something.”  Hence a critic of the pope is said to be undermining his authority, because people will not look to him for guidance if they hear he’s a bad pope.  The authority of the bishop is viewed in terms of the authority to execute justice and to direct policy in his diocese. To use a musical analogy, the priests and laity are instruments, the bishop is a conductor.  Or on a higher level, the pope is the conductor, and everyone else are the instruments.  In the words of one Catholic writer, we must become “the kind of Catholics Pope Francis wants us to be.”   To use an old analogy, the pope or bishop is the potter, we are the clay.  You may think that this situation would change under a “traditional pope”, but I am not that optimistic.

Even worse, authority is treated as a zero sum game.  To the extent the pope exercises authority, it comes at the expense of the bishops, or vice versa.  This was precisely the reasoning Rome gave in demanding the USCCB suspend any of their previous reforms, as these reforms would not give Rome a free hand to propose their own later reforms.  Rather than treating the reforms as a baseline that would be maintained but also adapted to meet local situations (strengthened where necessary), these were put forth with the expectation they would be the final word, and the USCCB has made clear that when they meet, do not expect much if any daylight from Vos Estis and their position, despite the fact they are freely clear to mandate additional reforms or additional mechanisms to make the rules more efficient.

This view of authority is, to put it bluntly, not Christian in the slightest.  To the extent it is believed, it is a religion that is not Christianity. It finds no basis in the Scriptures or Tradition. Worse, it is condemned explicitly by our Lord in the Gospel of Luke.  Yet this attitude has become a part of contemporary Catholicism.  To demonstrate why it is wrong, we must consider two questions:  what is the purpose of authority, and how is authority exercised?  

In a scene that could be repeated countless times throughout human history, the Apostles argue among themselves over who the best is, no doubt hoping the winner of that argument can catch Christ’s attention and be confirmed as the best.  Being the best involves prestige, authority, recognition, in a word, power.  Christ’s answer to this display is instructive for us:

“The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But not so with you; rather the greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like one who serves. For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one at the table? But I am among you as one who serves. (Luke 22:25-27)

The very concept of authority that we have is the very concept of authority Christ is concerned about.  In the political economy, it makes sense to understand authority primarily in the sense of who has power, and how that power can be wielded. That kind of understanding has its limits in the realm of the Church, which at its core is a family.  When the head of the family is primarily concerned with showing off his authority and reminding everyone else of their subservience, that family does not function.  Rather, for us, the point of authority is of service, not dominion.  In the Bible, whether it be the Gospels or the epistles of the Apostles, authority is described in terms of “making firm”, “setting straight”, never in the sense of imposing order or imposing a vision others must conform to.  The authority of the Apostles was not doubted (well at least not by the orthodox believer), but to understand authority in the terms of wielding and exercising power would have been foreign to them.

 In regards to how power is distributed or exercised, this case becomes even clearer.  Does Christ view the role of Peter as to transform his brethren into a different kind of Christian?  Is it to endlessly dictate policy to his brother bishops?

“Simon, Simon, Satan has demanded to sift all of you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your own faith may not fail; and you, when once you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.” (Luke 22:31-32)

The role of Peter is fundamentally a role of supporting the Apostles, helping them remain firm against the attacks of the devil.  Sometimes that will involve settling disputes, and it will involve compelling obedience.  Yet the Bible avoids such grandiose visions of authority for a reason.  We see this line of thought continued within the Church fathers.  While many look at the local bishop as a conductor of the tools of his diocese, St. Ignatius of Antioch looks at it differently:

"For your justly renowned presbytery, worthy of God, is fitted as exactly to the bishop as the strings are to the harp. Therefore in your concord and harmonious love, Jesus Christ is sung. And man by man, become a choir, that being harmonious in love, and taking up the song of God in unison, you may with one voice sing to the Father through Jesus Christ, so that He may both hear you, and perceive by your works that you are indeed the members of His Son" (Epistle to the Ephesians, Chapter IV)

Ignatius is the man in the earliest Church who laid out the clearest vision for the local bishop.  He presented the strongest vision of the monarchial episcopate in the Fathers.  Yet he also rejects the notion of authority present so often in the Church of our authorities as conductors of a symphony.  Rather, he is the harp that the strings attach themselves to.  The harp doesn’t direct the strings, but without the firmness of the harp, the strings cannot work together to make music.  Once the music is made, the faithful join in and then the symphony is produced.  The conductor is God, not the Bishop.

I sincerely believe that abandoning this model of authority has gotten us into a lot of trouble, especially in the present crisis.  Faced with the activities of robber bishop Michael Bransfield, the financial council of the diocese was “passive.”  Outside auditors were afraid to challenge him, “because of the Bishops position.”  Popes made serious mistakes in handling the abuse crisis, but hey, its their Church, they can run it as they see fit, right?

None of this is written to deny the pope’s authority, nor his jurisdiction.  Nor is it to deny that on prudential issues, the pope does indeed have a wide authority to take action (or not) as he sees fit.  Yet just because someone is given a position of authority, does not mean that authority should be wielded without question, or without a suggestion that it be wielded better.  Imagine if bishops stood up to the code of silence regarding abuse?  Imagine if diocesan employees refused to cooperate with the shuffling of predator priests while hiding it from the community?  Imagine if the financial practices of bishops were vigorously challenged by individuals who had just as much a stake in the success of the Church as the bishop does?  In terms of power, yes, bishops and the pope can make moves that others cannot.  Yet it is the job of the entire people of God to ensure that such authority is always used in the service of unity and making firm, and to never transform the local diocese or global church into the plaything of potenates.

Show Us Your Indignation

The big news in my home state of Michigan last week was that five Catholic priests in the dioceses of Lansing, Kalamazoo, and Detroit had been arrested for various sex abuse crimes--including a priest I had actually profiled on here eleven years ago for wearing a Detroit Red Wings logo on his chasuble.

This Sunday I went to mass at the parish where one of the priests had been from. Now, to make it clear, this priest was long gone from ministry in the diocese; the charges related to his time at this parish back in the 1980s, so he was not currently involved with the parish. Still, there were still a lot of parishioners around who remembered and loved this priest. The news of his arrest was a bitter reckoning.

The celebrant for the Mass was Fr. Tony Smela. Fr. Tony is an excellent priest int he Diocese of Lansing who has not been ordained too long. He is also a friend of the Traditional Latin Mass; the first EF Mass I attended of his was an All Souls Day Requiem Mass in 2018.

Anyhow, there is a lot of indignation these days about the response of the institutional Church to these clerical abuse scandals. Episcopal responses are usually cold, overly bureaucratic, and concerned more with protecting the hierarchy than addressing justice for the victims or identifying the source of the abuse. "We deeply regret" sorts of apologies feel stale; reforms were too often meaningless gestures, "cover your ass" accountability protocols, new norms that root out the rot entirely. 

The reason these responses have left so many Catholics frustrated and demoralized is because there is one vital ingredient lacking: INDIGNATION. I have heard lots of episcopal apologies in my time. Oh, I can tell the bishops are embarrassed by sex abuse. I can tell they are frustrated. I can tell they are concerned. But what I have seldom seen from them in any sense of outrage, of righteous indignation, of disgust. You get the impression that they are trying to "manage" a crisis rather than raise their voices in lamentation with the children of God.

Back to Fr. Tony. Fr. Tony gave what I felt was the ideal response to news of these priests' arrest. When it was time for the homily, he preached unflinchingly on the subject and was very animated. It was clearly visible how upset he was. He was disgusted, and he let it show. He accused the arrested priests of betrayal of the Church and their vocation. He was visibly shaken with indignation. It was evident how hurt and angry this clergyman was, who as a priest, suffers in a unique way whenever the reputation of the priesthood is tarnished. He called out the hierarchy for their failures; he accused the Vatican of failure. The man was angry and not afraid to show it. The righteous indignation that is so often lacking in episcopal apologies was clearly present here.

But he did not leave it with just denunciation and harsh words. He spoke of Christian forgiveness and the healing available in Christ. He left us with the sense that, even though we are rightly horrified, in God's grace and strength we can all move forward.

The result was that instead of thinking "Here comes another lame clerical apology" I felt profoundly that Fr. Tony was one of us. One of the sufferers. I felt solidarity. I felt like he understood. Really understood. And I felt more confident that we would overcome this. I obviously was still deeply saddened by the news, but I left the Mass with a strong sense of healing.

If you are a bishop reading this or someone who works in the communications department of a diocese that crafts statements to the public, please understand this: we want--we need--to see your disgust and indignation. I don't want any more lame "we deeply regret" apologies. I want to see that, as a pastor and a son of the Church, a bishop is personally horrified by this sin. I want to see you cry with desolation at the state of the Church as our Lord wept over Jerusalem.

Also, if you know Fr. Tony and appreciate his response to this and his ministry in general, please let him know.

+AMDG+

St. Ambrose on Baptism of Desire

On May 15, 392, the young Western Roman Emperor Valentinian II was found dead in the imperial residence at Vienne in southern Gaul. It is said he was hanged using his own handkerchief.

Though emperor in name, Valentinian found himself at the mercy of his general, Arbogast, who held the prominent position of magister militum in the west. The hostility between Arbogast and Valentinian was well known. The 6th century historian Zosimus wrote of a famous public incident between the two when Valentinian attempted to remove Arbogast from command:

At length Valentinian, no longer able to submit to his correction, when Arbogastes was approaching him as he sat on the imperial throne, looked sternly upon him, and presented him with a writing, by which he dismissed him from his command. Arbogastes, having read it, replied, "You neither gave me the command, nor can deprive me of it;" and having said this, tore the writing to pieces, threw it down, and retired. From that period their hatred was no longer kept to themselves, but appeared in public. [Zosimus, New History, Book IV]

When Valentinian was found hanged in his bedchamber shortly thereafter, it was rumored that foul play was involved carried out by imperial eunuchs sympathetic to Arbogast. At any rate, few believed it was an actual suicide. St. Ambrose of Milan, who knew the young Valentinian, bitterly lamented his passing. In a letter to Valentinian's father, Emperor Theodosius, he wrote:

I am filled, I confess, with bitter grief, not only because the death of Valentinian has been premature, but also because, having been trained in the faith and moulded by your teaching, he had conceived such devotion towards our God, and was so tenderly attached to myself, as to love one whom he had before persecuted, and to esteem as his father the man whom he had before repulsed as his enemy. [Ambrose of Milan, Letter 51]

St. Ambrose also delivered the funeral oration for the slain prince. The issue was tricky because Valentinian had died without baptism. He had intended to receive baptism from the hand of St. Ambrose in person but circumstance for some time delayed these plans from coming to fruition. Were the Catholic faithful to despair of his salvation, since he died without the sacrament of regeneration? In his funeral oration St. Ambrose says no, for the desire for the sacrament has granted Valentinian the grace he required:

But I hear that you grieve because he did not receive the sacrament of baptism. Tell me: What else is in your power other than the desire, the request? But he even had this desire for a long time, that, when he should come into Italy, he would be initiated, and recently he signified a desire to be baptized by me, and for this reason above all others he thought that I ought to be summoned. Has he not, then, the grace which he desired; has he not the grace which he requested? And because he asked, he received, and therefore is it said: 'By whatsover death the just man shall be overtaken, his soul shall be at rest.’ (Wisdom 4:7) [Taken from Deferrari: "On Emperor Valentinian" in Funeral Orations by Saint Gregory Nazianzen and Saint Ambrose of Milan]

St. Ambrose's teaching here would become a fundamental text in the Church's teaching of baptism of desire; St. Thomas Aquinas quotes St. Ambrose's oration in his own affirmation of baptism of desire: "A man can obtain salvation without being actually baptized, on account of his desire for Baptism, which desire is the outcome of "faith that worketh by charity," whereby God, Whose power is not tied to visible sacraments, sanctifies man inwardly. Hence Ambrose says of Valentinian, who died while yet a catechumen: "I lost him whom I was to regenerate: but he did not lose the grace he prayed for" (STh III. Q. 68. Art. 2)

Just a reminder that the idea of baptism of desire is not a modern one but has it roots in the earliest days of Christendom, having been affirmed in by not only St. Ambrose but St. Augustine and many others--and notice that Ambrose does not merely discuss it as a hypothetical possibility, but states it as a fact that it has happened in this case.

Kudos to the excellent blog Gloria Romanorum for bringing the story to my attention; they have a much more in depth article about it here.

Related: Baptism of Blood in St. Bede

Comments on the "Open Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church"

The past week has been full of discussion on the "Open Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church", a remarkable document put forward by a group of nineteen Catholic theologians and academics which—to use a phrase that has become all too familiar—makes "credible accusations" of heresy against Pope Francis and calls upon the bishops of the world to take some sort of action in rectifying the situation. If you have not yet read the "Open Letter", you can do so here.

1. The letter makes a very comprehensive case, drawing not only on particular statements of Pope Francis, but also his responses to the heretical statements of others (for example, the heretical interpretation of Amoris laetitia  published by the bishops of Buenos Aires in 2016, to which Pope Francis replied with a letter saying their document "completely explains the meaning" of Amoris laetitia and that "There are no other interpretations", a statement which he then had published in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis, the official compendium of his acta). The Open Letter also deals with Pope Francis's very troubling clerical appointments. Some Catholic apologists have been quick to point out that things like episcopal appointments or how the pope responds to news are not evidence of heresy, just like remaining passive or silent in response to requests for clear teaching is not heretical either. But I think these critiques miss the point; the Open Letter does not attempt to provide a single "gotcha" piece of evidence that presents and open and shut case for the pope's heresy. Rather, it attempts to show a general trend or broad disposition towards heresy on the part of the pope with several of the most striking examples highlighted as evidence. It is what Joseph Shaw referred to as a "promulgation [of heresy] by drift." And understood in this sense, it is brutally effective. Although I also tend to think that the examples are convincing taken individually as well.

2. Predictably, the Open Letter provoked responses from some who retreated to the tired old neo-Catholic canard that the signatories of the letter "should have gone to the pope directly" before airing their grievances publicly, or "going to their bishops in private first." Dr. Maike Hickson of LifeSite has written a remarkable piece chronicling around 30 times Catholics have reached out to Pope Francis—directly or indirectly—to clarify his teachings prior to the publication of the Open Letter. Her article ("Before Pope Francis was accused of heresy, Catholics reached out to him numerous times", May 9, 2019) is a must-read in order to understand the Open Letter in its historical context as the final recourse after the Dubia, Filial Correction, and many other attempts at communicating with Francis directly bore no fruit. Indeed, the publication of the Open Letter was not some rash screed hastily pumped out by a cadre of die-hard anti-Francis fanatics chomping at the bit for any excuse to attack the pope; rather, it represents the culmination of a long, exhausting series of attempts to reach out to Francis through the proper channels and is really a document of great restraint and patience. I commend the authors for taking this bold step. No Catholic rejoices or feels good about having to call out the pope; their actions must have been born out of deep concern for the Church and the good of souls and they should not be vilified for doing what was withing their canonical right and what their conscience dictated.

3. Christian charity demands that, when assessing the faults of others, we presume the best about them rather than the worst; in other words, we give them "the benefit of the doubt." But to give some one the benefit of the doubt presumes that there is room for doubt—it presumes that there is a certain ambiguity in how we interpret words and actions. And if there is ambiguity, we assume the best. But there is a huge difference between offering the benefit of the doubt and always being able to fabricate a benefit of the doubt. I have written about this before ("Benefit of the Doubt Presumes Doubt", Jan. 2017); in the case of Pope Francis, his litany of troubling statements and actions is so consistent that it is no longer realistic for a reasonable person to doubt the meaning of Francis's words or the intentions behind his initiatives; whether we look at the humorous Pope Francis Little Book of Insults or the more scholarly Denzinger-Bergoglio, the pontiff's thought is clear: he believes traditional Catholicism is a stuffy, hypocritical affair that keeps people from Christ and promotes "triumphalism" and "elitism." Heck, he even thinks standard Novus Ordo Catholicism is too stuffy; to that end, he intends to irreversibly reform global Catholic identity in the likeness of the most derelict Latin American banana-republics. It has gotten to the point where people who deny there is an issue are quite simply burying their heads in the sand.

4. Some bloggers are contending that the evidence is not sufficient to charge the pope with formal heresy, and therefore everything is alright. This is an incredibly simplistic and ridiculous argument. What these people fail to realize is that there is more than one way a teaching can be heretical—and I am not referring to the mere distinction between formal and material heresy. Traditionally, the Church used a gradation of judgments called theological censures. The division between heresy and orthodoxy is not necessarily black and white. There are "grades" of theological error; a statement can be not outright heretical but be simply ambiguous, for example. Or a statement may not be heretical in that it denies a de fide doctrine, but rather that its conclusions could lead to thinking that would be heretical.

Traditionally, heretical propositions are divided into three groups according as they bear principally upon (1) the import (what is said) (2) the expression (how it is said) (3) the consequences (what they lead to). Of import, we have hæretica (heretical), erronea (erroneous), hæresi proxima (next to heresy), errori proxima (next to error), temeratia (rash), etc. A "heretical" proposition is one that immediately and directly denies a de fide teaching. It is "erroneous" when it denies an article of faith that is certain (certa) but not de fide. "Next to heresy" and "next to error" means its opposition to a revealed and defined dogma is not certain, or chiefly when the truth it contradicts, though commonly accepted as revealed, has yet never been the object of a definition (proxima fidei). Something "next to heresy" could be defined as sapiens haeresim (smacking of heresy) or suspecta de hearesi, errorem (suspected of heresy or error). These are propositions which, though true textually, may due to modern currents of thought, be interpreted in a heretical way. I would say a lot of Pope Francis's most questionable statements fall into this latter category.

Next we come to the question of expression, or how the proposition is expressed. Here we can define four censures: ambigua (ambiguous), captiosa (captious), male sonans (evil-sounding), piarum aurium offensiva (offensive to pious ears), etc. A proposition is ambiguous when it is worded so as to present two or more senses, one of which is objectionable; captious when acceptable words are made to express objectionable thoughts; evil-sounding when improper words are used to express otherwise acceptable truths; offensive when verbal expression is such as rightly to shock the Catholic sense and delicacy of faith. Note that, while many pop-Catholic apologists will harp on that it is not heretical to speak ambiguously, the Church traditional theological censures to allow for a statement to be judged heretical based on its ambiguity alone.

Finally, we come to the question of consequences. Here we are dealing with what state of affairs the condemned propositions may lead to: subsannativa religionis (derisive of religion), decolorativa canodris ecclesiæ (defacing the beauty of the Church), subversiva hierarchiæ (subversive of the hierarchy), eversiva regnorum (destructive of governments), scandelosa, perniciosa, periculosa in moribus (scandalous, pernicious, dangerous to morals), blasphema, idolatra, superstisiosa, magica (blasphemous, leading to idolatry, superstition, sorcery), arrogans, acerba (arrogant, harsh), etc. This is not even an exhaustive list of the third group. Pope Francis' teachings relating to Amoris laetitia could be considered periculosa in moribus because, whether or not he has specifically stated as much himself, the fact that others are inferring heretical or immoral consequences from his words is sufficient to cast a heretical judgment upon his statements.

Let's be clear: YES, something can be heretical just based on how it is expressed. YES something merely ambiguous can be heretical. YES a statement can be heretical based on the immoral conclusions other people draw from it, even if the author does not express such intent; YES a statement can not contradict any truth of the faith itself but be considered heretical if following its implications leads to other heresy; YES something can be heretical if it is shocking to the ears of pious Catholics. YES a statement can be condemned because it is merely suspected of heresy. All of these condemnations fall short of a formal charge of heresy (explicitly and contumaciously denying a revealed dogma of the faith) but they are all gradations of heresy.

In other words, even if we were to grant a "benefit of the doubt" that Pope Francis has not promulgated a formal heresy, there are so many other ways his dubious comments could be construed as heretical or approximating to heresy that a censure would still be warranted and the pope's statements could still be considered heretical in ways that are less than formal. But nobody cares about theological censures anymore so this is just over the heads of many people.

5. The Open Letter, while accusing the pope of heresy, does not go so far as to assert that the pope ipso facto loses his office because of it. Rather, it calls upon the bishops of the Church to take action "to remedy the situation" by abjuring Pope Francis to make a public repudiation of these heresies and insist he suffer the canonical penalties proper to heresy if he does not. Although the Open Letter does not say it explicitly, it is evident that this means the loss of the papal office. I have never believed the proposition that the pope loses his office ipso facto for heresy. But I also deny that the Church (either the laity or the episcopate) has any remedy for removing a pope who does not wish to be removed. Though theologians have speculated on the ways and means for removing a heretical pope, I don't see how any of them can be affirmed without ultimately leading to some form of Conciliarism. When it comes to the theology of a papal deposition, all we have is theory—and that's not an argument against papal deposition, mind you; it's just pointing out it's never been done.

However, I think writers who stress theological opinions regarding papal deposition have ignored the fact that there is actually a large body of canonical legislation on the question; and more importantly, that this legislation is not merely hypothetical.

The Church's canonical tradition affirms a the principle prima sedes a nemine iudicatur ("The first See is judged by none"). The principle is universal; it refers to the clergy, secular rulers, as well as the laity. It is an absolute principle of papal independence against any attempt by any outside power whatsoever—even the episcopacy—to forcibly depose or judge a sitting pope. The principle prima sedes a nemine iudicatur first appears in the quasi-apocryphal Synod of Sinuessa (c. 314) relating to the problem of Pope St. Marcellinus, a pope who had apostasized under the Diocletian persecution (while, it should be noted, retaining the papal office and eventually becoming a saint). However, because many consider the acta of the Synod of Sinuessa forgeries, it is better to forgo Sinuessa and point to the historical Synod of Parma of 501-502 as the place when the principle enters the Church's canonical tradition. The pope at the time, Symmachus, was engaged in a schism with a rival papal claimant supported by the Byzantine Emperor. When called upon to pass judgment upon Pope Symmachus, the bishops at Parma declared prima sedes a nemine iudicatur ("The first See is judged by none"). And thus the concept of the immunity of the Roman pontiff from episcopal judgment passed into Canon Law.

It was reaffirmed many times. We see Pope St. Nicholas I (858-867) stating to the Byzantine Emperor that "Neither by Augustus, nor by all the clergy, nor by religious, nor by the people will the judge be judged...The first seat will not be judged by anyone" (Pope St. Nicholas I, Proposueramus quidem, Denz. 330).

 Pope Leo IX wrote in 1053 to the Patriarch of Constantinople that "By passing a preceding judgment on the great See, concerning which it is not permitted any man to pass judgment, you have received anathema from all the Fathers of all the venerable Councils..." (Pope St. Leo IX, "In terra pax hominibus" to Michael Cerularius and to Leo of Achrida, September 2, 1053, Denz. 352).

The principle was again enunciated by Pope St. Gregory VII in his famous bull Dictatus Papae, which was a collection of precedents regarding papal authority from the popes of the first millennium. There Gregory affirms that "That he [the pope] himself may be judged by no one" (Pope St. Gregory VII, Dictatus Papae, 19). The inclusion of  prima sedes a nemine iudicatur in Dictatus Papae is particularly important because Pope St. Gregory VII intended this document to be a kind of summation or syllabus of the most important, central teachings and canonical principles relating to the papacy. This principle was consistently reaffirmed in the Middle Ages and passed into the 1983 Code of Canon Law, which stipulates that no pope can be subjected to any kind of a trial. This is because he is beyond judgement (CIC 1556).

Canonically, there is no mechanism for removing a pope; not only this, but there is particular, perennial canonical legislation which specifically denies that a pope can be deposed. Even if the bishops of the world were to gather together to condemn Pope Francis of heresy, the most they could do would be to take a kind of vote of "no confidence" and plead with the Holy Father to voluntarily step down for the good of the Church. They could summon a synod, they could even declare his statements to be heretical to varying degrees; they could even declare he was "unworthy" of the papal office, as the famous Cadaver Synod did of Pope Formosus. But they could not declare he had forfeited his office—this was the exact situation the fathers at the Synod of Parma dealt with where prima sedes a nemine iudicatur was first elucdiated. They were not being asked to depose Pope Symmachus, but to declare that he was not truly pope or had forfeited his office. When called upon by the emperor to make such a proclamation, they deferred, saying no one could pass judgment on the first See. Similarly today, the bishops could not take any role in actively getting the pope out of office. They could deem him unworthy and his teachings heretical, express a statement of "no confidence", and then ask for the pope's resignation. But if he did not resign, the would not cease to be pope by the fact, and the bishops would have no power to make him step down.

Interestingly enough, when an opposing curial party wanted to get rid of Pope Stephen VI (897), they didn't depose him; they murdered him, because having the pope dead was so much simpler than dealing with the question of papal deposition against his will. I am not in any way remotely suggesting such a course be taken with Pope Francis; I cite the story as evidence that there exists no canonical way for getting rid of a pope, which is why they resorted to simply killing him.

Such are my thoughts for the time being, meager as they are. Bless you all, my brethren