Last month, on November 6, the great Vaticanist Sandro Magister published an interesting analysis about the prologue Cardinal Mueller wrote to Rocco Buttiglione’s book, Risposte amichevoli ai critici di Amoris Laetitia (Ares, 10 November 2017). There Magister shows the following:

[T]he cardinal … envisions – explicitly – only one case of possible access to communion for a Catholic who has gone on to a new union while the first spouse is still alive. And it is the case in which the first marriage, although it was celebrated in church, is to be considered invalid because of the absence of faith or of other requisite essentials at the moment of celebration, but such invalidity “cannot be proven canonically.”

In which case, Müller writes,

“It is possible that the tension seen here between the public-objective status of the ‘second’ marriage and the subjective fault could open, under the conditions described, the way to the sacrament of penance and to holy communion, passing through a pastoral discernment in the internal forum.”

Now, no one has pointed out that the case hypothesized here by Müller is the same one that Joseph Ratzinger had envisioned and discussed, both as theologian and as pope, he too admitting the possibility of access to the sacraments, always and in any case with a decision made “in the internal forum” with a confessor and with caution not to generate public scandal[.]

A careful examination of the documents of the Council of Trent and of the different opinions expressed in relation to Amoris Laetitia shows that this is perhaps the only point that has not been intellectually clarified. There are many other confusing points – due not to a lack of intellectual clarification, but to a lack of publicity for the intellectually solid positions already expressed. For this reason, I think it is important to tackle this present point.

Magister rightly points out that Benedict XVI himself had doubts concerning this very point: when a baptized person who gets married with the sacramental rites but without faith and afterward, having abandoned his first spouse and joined a second one, converts. These doubts were expressed by Cardinal Ratzinger, before he became pope, in a 1998 article. They were grounded in the opinions of some theologians according to whom canon law would have to do with ecclesiastical norms and not with divine norms. {See the preceding post on this blog by Robert Fastiggi.}

However, the opinion of the theologians mentioned by Cardinal Ratzinger are not accurate. Canon law has to do with divine law plus (as any law) natural and positive norms. What divides canon law from morality more accurately is that “law” (or, better said, “right,” objective ius) is what must be recognized and declared by the prudence of the judge. Right encompasses, regarding marriage, the same norms and problems of morality that the consciences of private persons have to consider when they want to make a right decision.

Sometimes, however, the private person has certainty in his or her conscience of a matter of fact that he cannot prove. Thus, there is a division and a difference, but they lie in the prudence of the judge and the prudence of the private person, not in the norms or problems involved.

The canonical dimension of the Church excludes that a person acts according to his certainty against the judgment of the Church judge or official. John Paul II considered this issue in a more general way in Familiaris Consortio 84 and concluded that the Church cannot grant communion to the faithful who find themselves in such situations: there are some “who have entered into a second union for the sake of the children’s upbringing and who are sometimes subjectively certain in conscience that their previous and irreparably destroyed marriage had never been valid” (FC 84). Precisely thinking of these persons, he declared that they may not receive the sacraments due to the requirements of Holy Scripture. It is hard, I know, but then perhaps this is how persons in such situations carry their own crosses and follow Christ.

Benedict XVI himself, once become pope, confirmed this doctrine in two enlightening paragraphs, contained in the post-synodal apostolic exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis, n. 29, which I copy here and which was quoted by Magister in 2011:

29. If the Eucharist expresses the irrevocable nature of God’s love in Christ for his Church, we can then understand why it implies, with regard to the sacrament of Matrimony, that indissolubility to which all true love necessarily aspires. There was good reason for the pastoral attention that the Synod gave to the painful situations experienced by some of the faithful who, having celebrated the sacrament of Matrimony, then divorced and remarried. This represents a complex and troubling pastoral problem, a real scourge for contemporary society, and one which increasingly affects the Catholic community as well. The Church’s pastors, out of love for the truth, are obliged to discern different situations carefully, in order to be able to offer appropriate spiritual guidance to the faithful involved. The Synod of Bishops confirmed the Church’s practice, based on Sacred Scripture (cf. Mk10:2- 12), of not admitting the divorced and remarried to the sacraments, since their state and their condition of life objectively contradict the loving union of Christ and the Church signified and made present in the Eucharist. Yet the divorced and remarried continue to belong to the Church, which accompanies them with special concern and encourages them to live as fully as possible the Christian life through regular participation at Mass, albeit without receiving communion, listening to the word of God, eucharistic adoration, prayer, participation in the life of the community, honest dialogue with a priest or spiritual director, dedication to the life of charity, works of penance, and commitment to the education of their children.

When legitimate doubts exist about the validity of the prior sacramental marriage, the necessary investigation must be carried out to establish if these are well-founded. Consequently there is a need to ensure, in full respect for canon law, the presence of local ecclesiastical tribunals, their pastoral character, and their correct and prompt functioning. Each Diocese should have a sufficient number of persons with the necessary preparation, so that the ecclesiastical tribunals can operate in an expeditious manner. I repeat that “it is a grave obligation to bring the Church’s institutional activity in her tribunals ever closer to the faithful”. At the same time, pastoral care must not be understood as if it were somehow in conflict with the law. Rather, one should begin by assuming that the fundamental point of encounter between the law and pastoral care is love for the truth: truth is never something purely abstract, but “a real part of the human and Christian journey of every member of the faithful”. Finally, where the nullity of the marriage bond is not declared and objective circumstances make it impossible to cease cohabitation, the Church encourages these members of the faithful to commit themselves to living their relationship in fidelity to the demands of God’s law, as friends, as brother and sister; in this way they will be able to return to the table of the Eucharist, taking care to observe the Church’s established and approved practice in this regard. This path, if it is to be possible and fruitful, must be supported by pastors and by adequate ecclesial initiatives, nor can it ever involve the blessing of these relations, lest confusion arise among the faithful concerning the value of marriage.

The issue was solved by Benedict XVI and by John Paul II, as one can see, in accordance with what I have called the canonical nature of the Church.

There is another intervention by Cardinal Müller that requires further examination and a brief comment. Since the prologue to Buttiglione’s book provoked a lively discussion, the cardinal gave many interviews to answer to his critics. In one of them, published on November 9, he stated:

In Latin America, for example, there are many marriages which are celebrated without canonical form, where you have couples who live together but one cannot know if there was effective consent to be married. I was recently in Haiti. There the situation is disastrous: all are called spouses, they live together, but they are formally married neither in the Church nor civilly. When some of them get more mature, they begin to attend the Church, and at that point, one must establish who is the true spouse. Here it is very important that the person be honest and declare sincerely with whom he or she has expressed true consent because it is consent that is of the essence of marriage, not only the canonical form. In any case, for the admission to the sacraments, it is the parish pastor or the bishop who has to clarify the situation in cooperation with the freedom of the faithful.

This paragraph suggests many reflections. One is that Europeans tend to consider with condescension what they call the “Latin American” Church. We Latin Americans do not want that. There are enormous problems in the faith of Europeans, and we do not think our problems are bigger than theirs.

Besides this, before the Council of Trent, marriage was contracted “solo consensu.” But the council changed that precisely because of the abuses this system allowed. Don Quixote has a couple of examples: men contracted marriage just to obtain what they wanted and afterward denied being married, leaving the women in the moral persuasion that they were not allowed to marry again without committing the sin of bigamy but without canonical means to enforce their marriages on the men. Thus, the canonical form was established as essential.

As Francis of Vitoria has taught in his commentary to the Summa Theologiae, when a solemn form is established for a juridical act, the violation the formality entails the nullity of the act in both the internal and the canonical forum:

If [an act could be valid in the internal forum while it is invalid in the canonical forum,] without a doubt the rights of human beings would have been established after a flawed deliberation and such rights would be ill established. It is proved: the allegation of the lack of form would be useless and very dangerous in the canonical forum if such defect had no effect in the internal forum. To say that a right exists in the canonical forum with which right human beings could be condemned [by God] would be absurd, because the laws [in truth] provide rather to the health of the soul than to that of the body[.]

So the Haitians are not married without the canonical form. There could be exceptions, but they have to be in accordance with canon law. A good example of these exceptions is given by cardinal Müller himself, in the same interview recently quoted:

There are particular circumstances – for example, in regimes that persecute the Church – where to marry canonically is impossible. Let’s give as an example North Korea.

That is a good example. Another one could be that of the Japanese Catholics, who for more than two centuries, until the end of the 19th century, formed a community of only laypeople, since the clergy was exterminated in the 17th century. They had only two sacraments: baptism and marriage. Of course, this is an exception in accordance with canon law. But here, too, the assertion of nullity must be in accordance with Christ’s law, even if perhaps a canon court cannot know the case and the sacrament was celebrated without the canonical form.

I think that with these considerations, sufficient light has been shed for the moment on the issue, which still requires some intellectual clarification. Let’s pray that this effort and the effort of many other Catholic authors who strive to be faithful to the solemn Magisterium of the Church reach the “peripheries” with God’s favor.

When your humble author first heard of a discussion on the need for civil Catholic discourse between the New York Times’ resident Harvard-educated conservative Catholic, Ross Douthat, and the public face of the Catholic LGBT movement in America, Fr. James Martin, S.J., he admittedly turned a little queasy. It seemed as though it would be a lovely fireside chat between two Catholic celebrities in which they would set aside the charade of differences they put up for the hoi polloi in the public sphere, engage in careless whispers expressing how they agree on the “important things,” and then swap some tips on how to get a table at that new Somali-El Salvadorian fusion restaurant that just opened up in midtown Manhattan.

Well, dear readers, your humble author is humble enough to admit that he was wrong – sort of.

The discussion was quite good, and remarkably honest. Upon first glance, there are two surprising takeaways.

The first is that Fr. Martin is much more intelligent than meets the eye. While he is best known as the smiling SpongeBob-esque traveling salesman for the LGBT movement, Fr. Martin emerged from the discussion as a Mephistophelean wordsmith who knew exactly what to say to lure Douthat onto his side (or at least attempt to do so). While he does use “old liberal” therapeutic language (which he calls being “charitable and loving”), Fr. Martin wielded his words as craftily as the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, making his arguments sound somewhat orthodox but carefully laying hidden messages for liberals with ears to hear. At one point, Fr. Martin joked that if he tweeted that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, he would “get hate tweets asking why [he] didn’t like the Holy Spirit.” The implication in this (bad) joke is that Fr. James is always orthodox, and the crazy traddies and conservatives who trash-post on his Twitter feed are just nitpicking lunatics with nothing better to do.

The second important takeaway from the dialogue is that Ross Douthat is an honest and sincere Catholic. Douthat stuck to his guns, and, in contrast to Fr. Martin’s seductive, Bernardin-esque theological “lounge language,” Douthat fought with simple Socratic honesty. He admitted that he is often forced into being civil because of his largely liberal audience and even, despite attempts by America Magazine and the National Catholic Reporter to paint a rose-colored portrait of the affair, appeared to clash with Fr. Martin at times. Douthat even was able to take a jab at Fr. Martin, slyly stating, “One of us is wronger than the other.”

More important than these initial thoughts, the chat between Fr. Martin and Mr. Douthat raises more important questions. What is the properly Catholic form of public discourse? Is Fr. Martin right that Christians should use Sesame Street-speak and only say nice things?1 The answer to this question is extremely important, for it unlocks the modus operandi of not only Fr. James Martin, S.J., but of Pope Francis himself and ultimately reveals how wrong both men are.

Despite attempts by Cardinal Walter Kasper, et al. to challenge the authenticity of the Gospels, the foundation and model of the Christian life is Jesus Christ himself, and it is nothing new to say that Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself used very strong language (and even physical violence) in his debates with those in error, calling the Pharisees in Matthew’s Gospel “serpents” as well as a  “generation of vipers” and even telling them they may be subject to “the judgment of hell.” In John’s Gospel, our Lord further calls the Jews who rejected Him children of the devil. These strong words would get our Lord blocked on social media and probably His account suspended as well.

Rather than “building a bridge” and using Elmo-talk to the Corinthians, St. Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit, thunders, “Know you not that the unjust shall not possess the kingdom of God? Do not err: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, Nor the effeminate, nor liers with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor railers, nor extortioners, shall possess the kingdom of God.”

This condemnatory and stronger rhetoric has been the hallmark of Catholic rhetoric from the Gospels to…well, Vatican II. In fact, this language has always been used with obstinate sinners and heretics.

When treating the vice of clerical sodomy in his famous Book of Gomorrah, St. Peter Damian writes that the vile sin “prepares snares for the one who walks, and for him who falls into the pit, it obstructs the escape. It opens up hell and closes the door of paradise. It makes the citizen of the heavenly Jerusalem into an heir of the Babylonian underworld. From the star of heaven, it produces the kindling of eternal fire. It cuts off a member of the Church and casts him into the voracious conflagration of raging Gehenna.” Certainly, we would not find these words of the great medieval saint in Fr. Martin’s Twitter feed or his infamous Building a Bridge.

Even when the Church first encountered Protestantism, she used “hateful” and “divisive” language to describe the Lutheran heresy. Pope Leo X in Exsurge Domine refers to Protestants as “foxes” and “lying teachers.” Moreover, with a bit of Italian prejudice for his northern European neighbors, the Medici pope calls Luther “a wild boar from the forest” who seeks to destroy the Italian vineyard of the “triumphant Church.” Rather than dialogue, Leo X argues that the writings of Martin Luther be “condemned, reprobated, and rejected.” It would be hard to imagine such words used today at the USCCB’s Office of Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs when Catholic prelates sit down for chats with graying liberal Protestant bishops, who, when they are not tending their blue-haired social justice warrior flock at church, are tending to their forty-plus cats at home.

Even “modern” popes such as Pope Pius IX  used very strong language to condemn the errors of the Enlightenment and liberalism. In Quanta Cura, Pope Pius IX refers to liberal notions as “evil” and “perverse” and “absurd,” which should be “detested” by all Catholics – Catholic bishops themselves, according to the late holy father, should “exterminate” these evil opinions. Pope Pius’s language would be later echoed by one of his successors, Pope St. Pius X, one of the last popes to follow the example of Jesus Christ and condemn error with rhetorical force.

Sadly, the Catholic press is one of the few places where one can encounter the strong and clear language that Jesus Christ, our Lord, used to condemn error. It is therefore all the more important that Catholic rhetoric elsewhere keep its bite.

{ Abyssum }

Professor Edward Peters is a reliably orthodox scholar who wants to contain the damage of the Post-Synodal Exhortation Amoris laetitia by relying on the defense of canon law, in particular Canon 915 of the new Code of Canon Law, which says: “Those who have been excommunicated or interdicted after the imposition or declaration of the penalty and others obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to holy communion” (cf. E. Peters,  Three ways to not deal with Canon 915, in “The Catholic World Report”, Jan. 24, 2017, and Some remarks on the de Mattei interview, in “The Catholic World Report”, Dec. 13, 2017, in which he criticizes my interview published at “OnePeterFive” on December 11, 2017). To this end he attempts to minimize the “Rescriptum ex audientia SS.mi” of June 5, 2017, rendering the two documents to which were attached to it practically irrelevant on the theological and canonical level (cf. On the appearance of the pope’s letter to the Argentine bishops in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis, in In the Light of the Law – A Canon Lawyer’s Blog, Dec. 4, 2017).

I will try to explain why this position, although motivated by good intentions, seems to me to be both weak and dangerous.

With regard to canon law I refer to the study of a talented Italian canonist who uses the pseudonym Augustinus Hipponensis. He observes that when Canon 915 speaks of “those who obstinately persevere in manifest grave sin,” it is not referring only to the divorced and remarried, but to a much wider category of persons which also includes, for example, politicians who publicly support legislation favoring abortion or euthanasia, as Cardinal Burke affirmed in one of his articles (Canon 915: The Discipline Regarding the Denial of Holy Communion to Those Obstinately Perseveringin Manifest Grave Sin,  in “Periodica de re canonica” (2007), pp. 3-58). The intention of Pope Bergoglio is not to change Canon 915 in toto, but only to expunge from it one category of persons (the divorced and remarried). In order to do this it was not necessary, or even logical, to amend the general norm. The papal rescript intends to deal only with the specific and particular ban (on the divorced and remarried), leaving the general meaning of the law intact. Canon 20 of the new Code effectively allows the canonical legislator to repeal a preceding discipline, even tacitly or implicitly, when the newer law is incompatible with the preceding one, or when the matter of the preceding law is reorganized ex novo[from scratch].

In the present case it seems doubtful that, on the legislative level, the prohibition established in Familiaris Consortio and also by divine law has been removed simply as a result of the exhortation Amoris Laetitia. The Italian canonist writes,

Today, surely it is assumed that the Bishop of Rome, making the Criterios Básicos (of the Argentine bishops) his own and praising them as the only possible interpretation of his exhortation, intended to admit the divorced and remarried – also known as adulterers – to Communion, providing for them a graduality in admission to the Sacrament. Therefore the prohibition – at one time absolute – would no longer be considered so stringent. Certainly, as the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts declared in 2000, we are dealing with a prohibition of divine law. Of this there is no question. And yet then this means that there is an indisputable difference between the human law [of Amoris Laetitia] and the divine law, which must be acknowledged, without trying to avoid it by affirming that the two documents are irrelevant and without wanting to draw out the logical theological and canonical consequences.

As for the theological aspect of the question, permit me to define the erroneous, or at least minimalist, conception of the Magisterium of the Church which Professor Peters seems to have. The ordinary Magisterium, exercised day by day by the Church, includes the encyclicals, decrees, pastoral letters, and dicourses of the Pope and Bishops throughout the world. Almost the entirety of the teaching of Pius XII on the matter of the regulation of birth was expressed in discourses, such as those to obstetricians or Catholic doctors, whose value as authentic Magisterium would have to be negated if we apply the reductive vision of Professor Peters. The hundreds of ecclesiastical documents gathered in the Enchiridion Symbolorum definitionum et declarationum de rebus fidei et morum of Heinrich Denzinger (1819-1883), updated to the present day, include constitutions, bulls, briefs, motu proprio, decrees, encyclicals, exhortations, and apostolic letters of every type, and taken together, constitute the depositum fidei of the Church. Few of these acts are infallible by themselves. But the ordinary Magisterium can become infallible when it is universal, in the sense of being continually repeated. The instruction Ad Tuendam Fidem of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of May 18, 1998 (AAS, 90 (1998), pp. 542-551), reiterates that a doctrine is to be understood as infallibly proposed when, although no solemn form of definition exists, “this doctrine pertains to the patrimony of the depositum fidei and is taught by the ordinary and universal Magisterium” (n. 2). As the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith explains, in order for the ordinary universal Magisterium to be considered infallible it must be “intended in a diachronic, and not necessarily only in a synchronic, sense (New formula of the “Profession of Faith” of June 29, 1998). In this regard, “in the Encycicals Veritatis Splendor, Evangelium Vitae, and in the same Apostolic Letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, the Roman Pontiff intended, although not in a solemn form, to confirm and reaffirm doctrines which belong to the teaching of the ordinary and universal Magisterium, and which therefore must be held in a definitive and unequivocal manner” (Doctrinal Commentary of the CDF on the Concluding Formula of the Profession of Faith).

On December 2, 2017, the Vatican communicated that on June 5 of this year Pope Francis conferred the status of “authentic Magisterium” on the letter sent by him on September 5, 2016, to the bishops of the region of Buenos Aires. The text of the letter together with the “Criterios básicos” laid down by the Argentine bishops was published, in the form of an Epistula Apostolica [Apostolic Epistle], in Acta Apostolicae Sedis, the official register of the Apostolic See (volume 10, 2016, pp. 1071-1074). The two documents were promulgated with a rescript ex audientia SS.mi, signed by the Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, who, in addition to seeing to the publication of the two preceding texts, qualified them as expressions of the authentic Magisterium (Summus Pontifex decernit ut duo Documenta quae praecedunt edantur per publicationem in situ electronico Vaticano et in Actis Apostolicae Sedis, velut Magisterium authenticum).

This document, like the Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia, certainly belongs to the ordinary Magisterium of the Church. As Fr. Brian Harrison has rightly pointed out, in a text presented by another illustrious scholar, Professor Paolo Pasqualucci, Apostolic Epistles [Epistulae apostolicae] are of a higher level than Apostolic Letters [Litterae apostolicae], than Motu Proprio, and even than Apostolic Constitutions, such as the one with which John Paul II promulgated the Catechism of the Catholic Church [Fidei Depositum, October 11, 1992]. John Paul used an Apostolic Epistle to promulgate what came to be considered as a definition ex cathedra proclaiming an infallible truth of the second category (definitive tenenda); namely, that only men can be ordained as priests (Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, 1994). The infallible character does not come automatically from the nature of an Apostolic Epistle, but from the fact that the teaching of the Pope confirmed the perennial teaching of the Church. Therefore, not incorrectly, Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmiero, President of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, declared on December 5, as reported by Catholic News Service:

The fact that the pope requested that his letter and the interpretations of the Buenos Aires bishops be published in the AAS means that His Holiness has given these documents a particular qualification that elevates them to the level of being official teachings of the church. … While the content of the pope’s letter itself does not contain teachings on faith and morals, it does point toward the interpretations of the Argentine bishops and confirms them as authentically reflecting his own mind,” the cardinal said. “Thus together the two documents became the Holy Father’s authentic magisterium for the whole church.

The Epistula of Pope Francis sweeps away every “hermeneutic of continuity,” affirming with authority that the only correct interpretation of chapter 8 of the Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia is the one held by the bishops of Buenos Aires in their pastoral letter of September 5, 2016 (“There are no other interpretations [No hay otras interpretaciones]”). In article 6 of this letter, the bishops affirm that

If one arrives at the recognition that, in a particular case, there are limitations that diminish responsibility and culpability [cf. 301-302 of AL], particularly when a person judges that he would fall into a subsequent fault by damaging the children of the new union, Amoris Laetitiaopens up the possibility of access to the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist [cf. footnotes 336 and 351 of AL].

According to Peters, the two documents of Pope Francis do not contain any assertions concerning faith and morals, but only disciplinary provisions. But a normative act having a disciplinary character in a matter of faith and morals is always an act of the Magisterium. Denzinger is full of disciplinary and/or pastoral provisions, such as the responses of Pope Nicholas I (858-867) “Ad consulta vestra” to  the Bulgarians of November 13, 866, which ought to be considered acts of the authentic Magisterium. In the case of the Epistula of Pope Francis we are not dealing with a rule having a disciplinary character, but with a new teaching on a matter of morals, which intends clearly to admit adulterers to Communion, foreseeing for them a graduality in admitting them to the Sacrament.

The “hermeneutic of continuity,” or the attempt to interpret erroneous or ambiguous documents in the light of the Tradition of the Church, did not work well even when it was promoted by a Pope like Benedict XVI. Is it not an illusion to pretend to keep using it when it is now the Pope himself who proposes the hermeneutic of discontinuity? Is it not simpler and more logical to remember that there can be errors contained in non-infallible acts of the ordinary Magisterium? “Authentic Magisterium” does not in fact mean “dogmatic,” and if the believer observes, in a reasonably evident manner, a precise opposition between a text of this Magisterium and the divine law of the Church, after accurately studying the matter, he may licitly suspend or negate his assent to the papal document.   This doctrine is found in the writings of the most authoritative theologians, such as Fr. Hugo von Hurter (1832-1914), who affirms:

“If in the mind of the believer there are grave and solid reasons, above all theological, against decisions of the authentic Magisterium (= non-infallible), whether episcopal or pontifical, it will be lawful for him to reject the error, assent conditionally, or finally also to suspend assent” (Theologiae Dogmaticae Compendium,  Wagneriana-Bloud et Barral, Innsbruck-Parigi, 1883, vol. I, p. 492).

Recalling the words of Saint Paul: “But even if we ourselves or an angel from heaven should preach to you a Gospel other than the one that we preached to you, let him be anathema” (Galatians 1:8), St. Vincent of Lerins comments:1

“But why does he say ‘even if we ourselves’ and not ‘even if I myself’? Because he means that also if Peter or Andrew or John or the entire college of the apostles preaches to you a Gospel other than the one that we preached to you, let him be anathema. What tremendous rigor! In order to affirm his fidelity to the primitive faith he spared neither himself nor the other apostles” (Commonitorium, cap. VIII, 2).

The possibility of infidelity to the Tradition of an assembly of bishops, and of Peter himself, however rare, is not excluded. To close one’s eyes to reality means to put oneself in a dead end. Both reason and the sensus fidei demand resistance, including public resistance, to a Pope who promotes, encourages, and favors errors and heresies within the Church.

Translated by Giuseppe Pellegrino

Image: Max Barascudts (1869-1927) — In the Scriptorium

Br. Barsanuphius: Good morning, Brother! To my surprise, the guest house is completely ready for today’s arrivals, and we have some time before the next office. Are you free for a conversation? We could pick up where we left off.

Br. Romuald: That would be an excellent thing to do. Let’s sit over here by the herb garden.

Br. Barsanuphius: My problem comes down to the relationship between the “conservative” instinct of submitting oneself to the Pope, and the “traditionalist” instinct of taking Tradition as a safe guide and making a yardstick of it. I see, on the one hand, that the instinct of revering the Pope and going along with his teaching is healthy, but on other hand, I know enough Church history to see that this is not absolutely foolproof. And besides, what is meant by “the Pope’s teaching” is far from simple, since it is not a uniform body of teaching but comes in various forms and degrees of authority.

Br. Romuald: It’s so like you to get right to the heart of the matter!

Br. Barsanuphius: For some people, the idea of taking Tradition as a guide sets up an intellectual construct that can never be determinate, thus encouraging an almost Protestant spirit of “private judgment.”

Br. Romuald: But as other people see it, the approach of submitting oneself to the Pope can go wrong if it places too much weight, in an ultramontanist spirit, on the dicta et facta, the words and actions, of the reigning pontiff.

Br. Barsanuphius: That’s the contrast in a nutshell.

Br. Romuald: I think, however, that both of these positions are extremes. There is a genuine via media that holds to the real primacy of the Pope as well as to the normative standing of the Tradition he is called to serve—and which he can betray in one way or another.

Br. Barsanuphius: Yes, exactly! I used to think that a Pope could never say or do anything wrong at all, as if it’s his job to be a sort of Delphic oracle who always gives an inspired answer, or a God-king whom we all venerate—“the Great Leader” in an almost Communist or fascist way.

Br. Romuald: You were suffering from a common illusion among Catholics. Most do not grasp well the meaning and the role of the papacy.

Br. Barsanuphius: Right. It was a watershed moment for me when I found no less than Joseph Ratzinger saying in The Spirit of the Liturgy—let me see, I have this book in my satchel… Ah yes, here it is.

After the Second Vatican Council, the impression arose that the pope really could do anything in liturgical matters, especially if he were acting on the mandate of an ecumenical council. Eventually, the idea of the givenness of the liturgy, the fact that one cannot do with it what one will, faded from the public consciousness of the West. In fact, the First Vatican Council had in no way defined the pope as an absolute monarch. On the contrary, it presented him as the guarantor of obedience to the revealed Word. The pope’s authority is bound to the Tradition of faith, and that also applies to the liturgy. It is not “manufactured” by the authorities. Even the pope can only be a humble servant of its lawful development and abiding integrity and identity. . . . The authority of the pope is not unlimited; it is at the service of Sacred Tradition.

Br. Romuald: A fine passage indeed, and indicative of a deep trend in his thinking. For if I’m not mistaken, he reiterated this position as Pope in 2005.

Br. Barsanuphius: You’re right about that. I have it printed on a sheet of paper tucked into this book, because it seemed so important to me:

The power that Christ conferred upon Peter and his Successors is, in an absolute sense, a mandate to serve. The power of teaching in the Church involves a commitment to the service of obedience to the faith. The Pope is not an absolute monarch whose thoughts and desires are law. On the contrary: the Pope’s ministry is a guarantee of obedience to Christ and to his Word. He must not proclaim his own ideas, but rather constantly bind himself and the Church to obedience to God’s Word, in the face of every attempt to adapt it or water it down, and every form of opportunism. … The Pope knows that in his important decisions, he is bound to the great community of faith of all times, to the binding interpretations that have developed throughout the Church’s pilgrimage. Thus, his power is not being above the Word of God, but at the service of it. It is incumbent upon him to ensure that this Word continues to be present in its greatness and to resound in its purity, so that it is not torn to pieces by continuous changes in usage.

Br. Romuald: Well, then, we seem to be in agreement about the actual role of the Pope and the limitations of his office. But I recall that yesterday you were struggling with the problem of John Henry Newman’s conversion and how he switched his allegiance, in a way, from an abstract construct called “Tradition” to a concrete measure called “Papacy.”

Br. Barsanuphius: Yes. In 1840, Newman believed that “Tradition = Catholicism,” while in 1845 he had come to believe that “Pope = Catholicism.” Ubi Petrus, ibi ecclesia, and all that good stuff.

Br. Romuald: In light of the foregoing quotations from Ratzinger, however, wouldn’t we have to maintain that the difference between Newman the Anglican and Newman the Catholic is not this at all, but rather, that by 1845 he had come to see that the Pope is an integral and central part of the picture, as the one who can determine and define—and indeed has historically determined and defined—what is and is not according to Tradition, or what is or is not taught in Scripture?

Br. Barsanuphius: Of course. The absence of this magisterial power in Protestantism explains why it exists in over 30,000 denominations. Someone has to be able to say, when push comes to shove, what is or is not taught by Scripture and Tradition.

Br. Romuald: Surely, the next step is to say that the Pope cannot in any way add to or subtract from the dual font of Revelation, namely, Scripture and Tradition. The Magisterium interprets Revelation; it does not originate or modify it. The Magisterium is decisively secondary to it. This is pure Catholicism, without a whiff of 1840s Anglicanism. One may and must view the head of the Church on earth as a visible sign and source of communion within the Church, without viewing his authority as absolute over doctrine and discipline.

Br. Barsanuphius: How could I disagree? This seems like pure common sense to me. But how do we know when a Pope is acting according to his office and when he might be departing from it? If he is ultra vires, outside the bounds—can we ever know that?

Br. Romuald: Yes, I think we have to be able to do that. At least something of the content of Revelation can be known by faithful Catholics with such certitude that if—perhaps per impossibile, if you wish—a Pope were to contradict it, they could know he was in error and refuse to follow the error, in spite of its papal patronage.

Br. Barsanuphius: If one were to deny that the orthodox faith could be known at all apart from the teaching of the current incumbent of the papacy, how would that be any different from epistemological skepticism about the knowability, objectivity, constancy, and universality of the Catholic Faith?

Br. Romuald: Indeed—we would not even be able to recognize the continuity of the Faith over time, since whatever continuity showed up in the historical record would be merely the result of a lot of Popes who happened to will the same thing. It would not be a guarantee that what they adhered to was the truth and that they would never adhere to anything different.

Br. Barsanuphius: Such an approach would negate the age-old rule of St. Vincent of Lérins, who taught that we must adhere to doctrines believed “always, everywhere, and by everyone.”

Br. Romuald: Exactly! My dear brother, you surely see by now that we cannot sidestep or wave away the need for rational criteria to determine how and when to obey the Pope or embrace his statements, precisely in order to remain faithful ourselves to the immutable truth of the Faith. By this, I mean that no matter how much our insights into God may develop over time, they will never contradict that which has been solemnly or consistently taught before.

Br. Barsanuphius: As you were explaining to me last week, this is the reason why John of St. Thomas, Cajetan, Bellarmine, Melchior Cano, and other great theologians of the past wrote extensively on these matters, distingushing carefully between papal statements or judgments that must be accepted, and those that might be questioned or, in dire cases, must be rejected.

Br. Romuald: Perhaps we should not speak so hypothetically. Many things said and done by more recent Popes are extremely hard to reconcile with the manifest teaching of earlier councils and Popes and even Sacred Scripture; it’s downright scandalous at times. Simply compare the encyclical letter Casti Connubii to the apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia!

Br. Barsanuphius: Ah, brother, you have raised a painful subject. For quite some time, to be honest, I’ve avoided following Vatican news, so as not to lose heart or become angry or depressed or distracted.

Br. Romuald: I totally sympathize with the desire not to know how bad things have become, but we must recognize that the issues at stake—such as the proposal that we should invite to Holy Communion those who are living objectively in a state of adultery!—concern the very essence of our Faith. We cannot ignore them, wishing they would go away.

Br. Barsanuphius: Besides, people will be asking us what our opinion is. As men of religion, we have a duty to be well-informed and well-educated—

Br. Romuald: —and prepared for those awkward moments after Mass or in the gift shop.

Br. Barsanuphius: You can say that again! A few weeks ago, when I was running the shop, a man came in and started going on about how the situation in the Church today was so bad that it was surely a sign that we did not have a legitimate Pope. I tried to reason with him about the difference between not having a Pope at all and having a bad Pope. If you’ve got a bad Pope, you can explain the desperate situation in the Church without much difficulty. In this case, we apply Ockham’s razor.

Br. Romuald: Did you convince him?

Br. Barsanuphius: I think so. I told him that our situation would never get any better unless he was praying every day for the Pope and the Church—and made sure to protect himself against evil spirits. After friendly banter and a cup of tea, he bought a bunch of St. Benedict medals, a few rosaries, and a small booklet with Prime and Compline, and left in good spirits.

Br. Romuald: Good to hear. What a blessing that gift shop is.

Br. Barsanuphius: But the conversation made me melancholy. In fact, it’s what prompted our conversation yesterday about the traditionalists’ insistence on the fixed and settled teaching of the Church in the past—for example, the decrees, canons, and anathemas of the Council of Trent—as a permanent measure of the present. It made me wonder if I am perhaps too attached to a certain vision of the past…

Br. Romuald: We can all feel that way at times. Yet the past is given to us as the foundation on which the present is built, and we do not change the foundation of a building unless we want it to fall down.

Br. Barsanuphius: A sign that we are not crazy is the vast number of priests, bishops, and even cardinals who are shocked and sickened by what they see happening in Rome. This is not at all about distrust of the Pope, rejection of the papacy, or the exaltation of private judgment. It is about distrust of those who are damaging the Church and the Faith their predecessors taught.

Br. Romuald: Positively, it is about holding fast to the teaching of Our Lord in the Gospels about marriage and divorce—teaching clearly stated and determined past all doubt by the Magisterium of the Church, including most recently (and repeatedly) by St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI.

Br. Barsanuphius: Amen to that. What is the Pope for, if not to guard and proclaim the Deposit of Faith, integral and unadulerated?

Br. Romuald: And to think this used to be taken for granted! Newman calls the pope a remora, “a breakwater, a hindrance, a stopper against innovation,” as the genial Fr. Hunwicke puts it. By his very office he is to be stubbornly conservative, doctrinally unoriginal, utterly traditional.

Br. Barsanuphius: That is what the Roman Church was famous for in the first millennium of Christianity—her Roman Canon is the most ancient and unchanged of all anaphoras—and she largely retained that role in the second millennium as well.

Br. Romuald: Yes, the Roman Church was so resistant to change that it did not even recite the Creed during Mass for many centuries, since that was not a part of the existing liturgy, and finally gave in when everyone else was using it elsewhere.

Br. Barsanuphius: We sure could have used some of that spirit of resistance to change in the sixties and seventies, when secular culture had more or less made a religion out of evolution!

Br. Romuald: You can say that again.

Br. Barsanuphius: Clearly, what we need is a reforming Pope, a man like St. Gregory VII, St. Pius V, or St. Pius X, one who can come in and be that stopper against innovation—with, I might as well say it, a pair of strong arms to sweep out the Augean stables.

Br. Romuald: What’s strange beyond belief is that there are people out there who would think we are disloyal Catholics for saying such things. How little they know of loyalty or Catholicism!

Br. Barsanuphius: In any case, by God’s grace I will never abandon Our Lord or the See of Peter or the Catholic Faith that has been handed down to each generation in the official doctrine of the Church. As the first pope said: “To whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

Br. Romuald: Well said.… even if we may be legitimately perplexed and grieved by the latest successor of Peter, to whom Our Lord, were He still walking the paths of this earth, would have plenty of reason to utter the same words as he did to the first Pope: “Get behind me, Satan: you are thinking the thoughts of men, and not the thoughts of God.”

Br. Barsanuphius: “The thoughts of men, and not the thoughts of God…” That reminds me. Did you hear the news about the Acta Apostolicae Sedis?

Br. Romuald: Alas, yes. What do you make of it?

Br. Barsanuphius: As far as what the texts say, it’s nothing new. Astute observers all along have known that sacramental access for Catholics living in adultery is what both Synods as well as Amoris Laetitia have always been angling towards. Conservatives who kept doing hermeneutical somersaults to prove that “nothing has changed” now have enough egg on their face for a lifetime supply of omelettes. The defenders of continuity have just been unceremoniously dumped, while the agents of revolution have received the signal: “full steam ahead.”

Br. Romuald: But it raises the stakes, doesn’t it, invoking “magisterial authority” and sticking it in the Acta and so forth?

Br. Barsanuphius: It seems to be a favorite move nowadays to think that slapping the label “magisterial” onto packages will suddenly make the contents edible or even healthy. No, that depends on the ingredients, not on the label. Weren’t you paying attention when we discussed this just a minute ago?

Br. Romuald: But it seems that including something in the Acta is a big deal. I remember reading in a neoscholastic manual from the fifties a statement that “whatever appears in the acts of the Holy See may be assumed to be binding teaching, since there is no more official manner in which to publish documents intended to bind the faithful with a religious submission of will and intellect.”

Br. Barsanuphius: For one thing, you are forgetting your Lumen Gentium.

Br. Romuald: There are some things I have never tried very hard to remember.

Br. Barsanuphius: Come now, this document is your friend—on this point, at least. It says that one must gauge authoritative statements by many criteria: the type of document in question, the repetition of a doctrine, the clear intention to define or condemn. Although published in the Acta, this recent thing is just a letter to a small group of bishops, not even an episcopal conference; it enunciates a novelty rather than repeating what has always been taught; and it is not couched in language that could possibly vie with Canon 915, which expresses either dominical teaching or a conclusion logically derived from dominical teaching.

Br. Romuald: In short, it changes nothing in the Church’s doctrine or discipline.

Br. Barsanuphius: Nor could it, for that matter. It’s a bit like saying “There are special circumstances in which it might be appropriate to square a circle.” But a circle can never be squared. Therefore the special circumstances will never arise.

Br. Romuald: Well said.

Br. Barsanuphius: Getting back to your manual, let us be frank: the neoscholastic manuals have their strengths, but a sane, moderate account of papal authority is not one of them. Remember how Newman complained about the likely results of the proclamation of the dogma of infallibility at Vatican I?

Br. Romuald: He predicted that there would be a dangerous veneration and adulation of the person and opinions of the reigning pope, contrary to the limited doctrine of infallibility defined at that council.

Br. Barsanuphius: Perhaps what we are going through today is the messy manner in which the problems Newman diagnosed will finally be sifted through and brought to clarity. For there has been over a century of papal maximalism and positivism that sits uneasily with most of Catholic tradition, and we can see it pretty much self-destructing at this time.

Br. Romuald: In other words, we have had unreasonable expectations about the papacy, and now the Lord is putting us to the ultimate test, to see whether we are mature enough in our faith to deal with it.

Br. Barsanuphius: To put it more positively: this pontificate will force theologians to make more distinctions about the exercise of the papal office and the exact parameters of the obedience of the faithful than they have ever been required to make before. It used to be considered a rule of thumb—in your neoscholastic manuals, for instance—that the mere appearance of something in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis would justify making a religious submission of will and intellect to it. This latest publication rather abruptly puts an end to that exaggerated deference!

Br. Romuald: You mean, shows us that the assumptions of the 1950s are untenable?

Br. Barsanuphius: Right. The 1950s gave us two striking examples to think about: the Assumpion with a capital ‘a’, and the assumptions of the liturgical reformers that gave us the “reformed Holy Week.” The former is a dogma of the faith; the latter was a tragic rupture.

Br. Romuald: I know what you mean. For a long time I had this uncomfortable feeling that the Pacellian rites were a pastiche of old and modern bits, based on someone’s clever idea of how things ought to go. It never seemed right.

Br. Barsanuphius: And when the monastery returned to the ancient rites of Holy Week, I was—I have to say—just carried away by the awesomeness, the majesty, the overpowering reality of them. I felt almost crushed by their weight, and yet oddly free to be serious about the most serious thing of all.

Br. Romuald (after a silence): You are turning into a mystic on me, brother…

Br. Barsanuphius (smiling): You can blame that on the old liturgy!

Br. Romuald: The point is, we need a better rule than that neoscholastic automatism, which practically assumes that every incumbent of the papal throne will be a saint and a doctor of the Church to boot. We need something more in accord with the intentions and texts of Vatican I, not to mention the nuanced understanding, developed over nineteen centuries, of the inherent authority of Scripture, Tradition, and the Magisterium.

Br. Barsanuphius: What you say reminds me that in this regard, as in so many others, we are inferior to our forefathers, who, in addition to their other good qualities, tended to be more flexible, more realistic, more zealous, and more common-sensical than we are… Ah, do you hear the Vespers bell ringing? Let’s go, so we’re not late for station.

Br. Romuald: Pray for me, brother. I never thought I’d live to see such times.

Br. Barsanuphius: Nor does any of us. But this is the age God willed for us—for you and me. And, as strange as it may seem, He chose us for these times, He wanted us to be here, living, praying, suffering. We’ve mentioned Newman a lot. You know that marvelous meditation of his, which has brought me much consolation over the years:

God has created me to do Him some definite service;

He has committed some work to me

which He has not committed to another. …

Therefore I will trust Him.

Whatever, wherever I am, I can never be thrown away.

If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him;

in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him;

if I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him.

My sickness, or perplexity, or sorrow

may be necessary causes of some great end,

which is quite beyond us.

He does nothing in vain;

He may prolong my life, He may shorten it;

He knows what He is about.

He may take away my friends,

He may throw me among strangers,

He may make me feel desolate,

make my spirits sink,

hide the future from me—

still He knows what He is about.

It is our job to offer up a pure sacrifice of praise, and to keep the truth jealously that He has imparted to us. This will be how we “save the Church.” It will not happen any other way.

Br. Romuald: You have some wisdom beyond your years, young man. Let’s be off.

Editor’s note: the following is from Paul Stark, Director of the forthcoming film, The Vatican Deception.

There’s a new feature documentary film coming to theaters on January 18, 2018 called The Vatican Deception. It’s a powerful investigation into the past century through the lens of the Fatima prophecies, and it offers insights into the current crisis in the Vatican, how the crisis is linked to key global events, and why there’s a battle in the Vatican to conceal the prophecies. Those who know the story will see many familiar themes compiled in a comprehensive documentary designed to captivate the experts as much as those who know little or nothing about it. The film also reveals to anyone trying to make sense of these turbulent times that if you look back on all the natural disasters, terrorism, mass shootings, fraud, violence, greed, and “wars and rumours of wars” (Matt. 24:6) in the context of these prophecies, you get a sobering perspective on why the world appears to be spinning out of control.

What’s astonishing these days is how many people have never heard of the prophecies about the three secrets of Fatima. It’s astonishing because back in the 1950s, everyone knew about them. They were popularized in the media when Warner Bros released a Hollywood feature about them, and the Fatima film was nominated for an Academy Award in 1953. The world knew about the first two secrets of Fatima that were published during World War II, and the world awaited the revelation of the mysterious Third Secret in 1960. But the moment Pope John XXIII came into power in 1958, there was silence. The prophecies and the missing text fell into obscurity, and today, most of the world knows nothing about them. The world’s most remarkable mystery disappeared…but not entirely.

There are those adherents to the Roman Mass who preserve the memory of these prophecies with special respect. On this conflict – between those who preserve the secrets of Fatima and those who suppress them – rests the fate of humanity, according to the prophecies of Fatima, because its outcome will determine whether the world will suffer unimaginable calamities or enjoy a remarkable period of peace. It is therefore reasonable to ask: if such prophecies have a flawless track record about earlier predictions, and if they predict future global devastation, and if they have given us a message about how to protect ourselves in these times, is it not paramount that we all should know about them, whether or not we choose to accept them? The Vatican Deception provides sufficient testimonies for its audience to answer this question for themselves, beginning with an illustration of the historical context for these prophecies, then leading us into a comprehensive investigation that reveals why these prophecies are so relevant today.

The documentary’s production spans over seven years and two very different popes, and it features more than four years of research. The heartbeat of the documentary is one individual and his battle with the Vatican. It tells the story of his mission to promote the prophecies of Fatima and the incredible efforts to sabotage his work. Through the struggle of one man, we come to understand that something monumental is taking place – something that might best have been summarized by Pope Benedict XVI, who read the Third Secret of Fatima. As Cardinal Ratzinger, he gave us a chilling glimpse into the hidden message of Fatima when he did an interview with Jesus Magazine, published on November 11, 1984. In this interview, he was asked the following question:

“Cardinal Ratzinger, have you read what is called the Third Secret of Fatima [i.e., the one that Sister Lucia had sent to Pope John XXIII and which the latter did not wish to make known and consigned to the Vatican archives]?”

In reply, Cardinal Ratzinger said: “Yes, I have read it.”

The response was so frank that it provoked a further question: “Why has it not been revealed?”

To this, Ratzinger replied: “Because, according to the judgement of the popes, it adds nothing to what a Christian must know concerning what derives from Revelation – i.e., a radical call for conversion; the absolute importance of history; the dangers threatening the faith and the life of the Christian, and therefore of the world. And then the importance of the ‘Novissimi’ (the last events at the end of time). If it is not made public – at least for the time being – it is in order to prevent religious prophecy from being mistaken for a quest for the sensational. But the things contained in this ‘Third Secret’ correspond to what has been announced in Scripture and has been said again and again in many other Marian apparitions, first of all that of Fatima.”

What Cardinal Ratzinger said here is no insignificant thing! How did such an explosive statement become so forgotten?

The Vatican Deception provides a comprehensive examination into the details, and what it unveils is arguably the most important story of our times. And despite its ominous themes, it provides a message of hope. Ultimately, in the story of Fatima, there is a remarkable answer that mitigates the horrific devastation it predicts.

The film’s movie trailer and details can be seen at www.TheVaticanDeception.com.