[ Emphasis and {commentary} in red type by Abyssum ]
Now that Cardinal Gerhard Müller has been removed from his post at the Vatican, the main target of the circle around Pope Francis is Cardinal Robert Sarah, prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship. Their latest coup is the release of a letter of “correction” aimed at Cardinal Sarah and signed by Francis. Published on Sunday, the letter was celebrated as a just humiliation of the cardinal and accompanied by calls for his resignation.
Earlier this fall, Pope Francis issued Magnum Principium, a document granting bishops’ conferences greater latitude to make their own translations of sacred texts and liturgy. Cardinal Sarah replied with a letter that offered a narrow reading of the document, preserving as much as possible the power of Rome to guard against mistranslations (such as the desire of German bishops to translate pro multis as “for all,” rather than as the correct “for many”). Pope Francis has now publicly declared that Sarah is wrong, and that Magnum Principium has indeed reduced Rome’s power of oversight.
This is a calculated humiliation of Cardinal Sarah—and not only of him. Of Pope Benedict XVI, too, since he is the great champion of the “reform of the reform,” an attempt to correct the liturgical innovations that followed the Second Vatican Council. And of St. John Paul II, who in 2001 issued the document Liturgiam Authenticam, which Francis has sought to gut with Magnum Principium.
Cardinal Sarah suffered a similar humiliation a little over a year ago, after he urged bishops and priests to celebrate the Mass ad orientem, facing east, according to the ancient practice of the Church. This was another effort to advance “reform the reform.” The cardinal stated that he had talked with the pope about the topic, and that the pope had given his assent to the proposal. If so, the Vatican made no acknowledgment of this fact in its note of blunt denial.
Another humiliation occurred when the pope eliminated most of the existing members from the Congregation for Divine Worship and replaced them with people who are more hostile to Sarah and his liturgical views. And there is the matter of the “Ecumenical Mass,” a liturgy designed to unite Catholics and Protestants around the Holy Table. Though never officially announced, a committee reporting directly to Pope Francis has been working on this liturgy for some time. Certainly this topic is within the jurisdiction of the Congregation for Divine Worship, but Cardinal Sarah has not officially been informed of the committee’s existence. According to good sources, Sarah’s secretary, Arthur Roche—who holds positions opposed to those of Benedict XVI and Sarah—is involved, as is Piero Marini, the right-hand man of Monsignor Bugnini, author of such noted works as La Chiesa in Iran and Novus Ordo Missae.
To those names, add the Undersecretary of Divine Worship, Corrado Maggioni, and a layman, the extremely “progressive” liturgist Andrea Grillo. Recently, Grillo harshly attacked Benedict XVI after the pope emeritus wrote in the preface to one of Sarah’s books that with Sarah, “the liturgy is in good hands.” And Grillo attacked Sarah himself, calling him “incompetent and inadequate.” If Grillo behaves so uncouthly, it must be because he is sure of being protected by friends in high places {chief among whom would be Francis himself. . .}
Now, we know that the pope is not greatly concerned with liturgy { that is obvious by the way he celebrates Mass, not genuflecting and not kneeling when the Blessed Sacrament is exposed} , and he probably doesn’t care much about this paticular issue. But his general ideological orientation is nontraditional, and he tends to side with the part of the Church that calls itself progressive while seeking a return to the 1970s: the bishops of Germany, Belgium, and England.
Some of these figures are now asking for the head of Cardinal Sarah. But this is unlikely to happen. It was Francis who appointed Sarah Prefect of Divine Worship in November 2014. If he wants to replace him, he must wait at least two years, when Sarah’s five-year term will come to an end {Francis does not have to wait, but it is politically advantageous for him to do so}. So the self-styled reformers who make up the “magic circle” for the liturgy must patiently endure the presence and activity of the cardinal, who is not afraid to fight, even alone.
Of course, the progressive party in the Vatican has another motive to attack Cardinal Sarah. In December, Pope Francis will reach age eighty-one. Cardinals are already thinking of a future conclave. One of the men viewed as most papabile is Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Parolin, who seems to be distancing himself from some of the more questionable aspects of Pope Francis’s reign. And another is Cardinal Robert Sarah, who is known for his holiness of life and lack of interest in any form of power or coercion, even in the Church. Moreover, Africa is the continent where the Church is growing most dramatically, and where faith is often practiced to the point of martyrdom. Nothing could be more fitting than for the next pope to come from that continent. And so we come to the great irony of the campaign to discredit this quiet and long-suffering churchman. Cardinal Sarah is attacked precisely because he is seen as having the makings of a pope.
Marco Tosatti is a Vaticanist who writes from Rome.
Altar with chalice and Missal in the Basilica of St Nicholas in Rome (t0m15/us.fotolia.com)
Liturgy, Authority, and Postmodernity
As our self-consciously modern liturgical rites approach their fiftieth birthdays we would do well not to cling to them uncritically. Nor can we follow postmodernity down paths of ecclesial and liturgical subjectivism.
Editor’s note:The following was originally delivered as the Opening Plenary Address for the Annual Conference of The Society for Catholic Liturgy, held in Philadelphia on September 28, 2017.
[ Emphasis and {commentary} in red type by Abyssum ]
Introduction
Future historians of philosophy will, no doubt, have much to say about our pivotal use of the word “modern” in contemporary discourse. We categorise schools of thought as “pre-modern,” with a great deal of sympathy for those poor people whose prived existence without hot and cold running water, electricity or intellectual emancipation we so pity; or as “modern” – “early” or “late” – perhaps with admiration for these devotees of intellectual renaissance, enlightenment, autonomy and liberty and even with some respect for their cult of Reason; or as “postmodern,” with some interest and perhaps even mild astonishment at its unhesitating dethronement of Reason and the rejection of any search for Truth that this triumph of subjectivity entails.
Future historians of liturgy may similarly wonder at the devotion of many contemporary liturgists to the term “modern” in liturgical discourse, be that in disparaging the purportedly non-participatory nature of pre-modern liturgy; in rejoicing at the breakthroughs of modernity in the enlightenment liturgies of the eighteenth century and at its triumph in the liturgical reform following the most recent Ecumenical Council; or in embracing the paths of radical inculturation and deconstructive creativity downwhich postmodernity beckons the liturgy.
Analogous observations in respect of theological and pastoral discourse and practice are also possible. Whether we ought to or not, whatever the discipline, far too often we consciously or subconsciously default to defining ourselves and our theological, liturgical, and pastoral initiatives and practices in relation to modernity.
Whilst the Church’s critical engagement with current or prevailing philosophical narratives rightly begins with St Paul at Athens (see Acts 17: 16-34) and is a duty which cannot be ignored due to the true goods which such substantial dialogue can yield, and indeed that it has given the Church throughout her history, for the Christian it is the person of Christ, God incarnate in human history, the definitive revelation of the Father, who is pivotal and in relation to whom we define ourselves. He, not the prevailing philosophical fashion, is our reference.
Therefore, whilst the devotees of philosophical, theological and liturgical modernism and postmodernism may well teach us much about the world in which we live, and lead us to valuable insights as how better to faithfully to live and proclaim the Gospel of Christ in our world, our eyes must remain fixed on Christ living and acting today in the Sacred Liturgy of His Holy Church (see: Sacrosanctum Concilium, 7). It is in and from this ongoing liturgical encounter that the Christian takes his or her identity as a member of the Church.It is in the context of this cultic relationship with Christ that His Church exercises authority in respect of her members and of her mission to the world. We worship Jesus Christ, not modernity or postmodernity. We do this not as individuals, but ecclesially as members of the One True Church he founded; as baptised members of His ecclesia.
And yet we know that at the turn of the twentieth century the Church endured what became known as the “modernist crisis” and that the philosophical, theological, and liturgical progeny of modernism matured in the course of the twentieth century. The Second Vatican Council was itself in many ways a conscious attempt to address the needs of modern man. The liturgical reform which followed it was a self-conscious attempt to construct rites which would better reach modern people.
Today, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, “modern” is modern no longer: we have moved beyond modernity into the “post” modern era.Where does that leave us? What does that mean for our modern liturgical rites and practices as they approach their fiftieth birthdays? Are we hastily to pension them off and hurry to create postmodern ones (if that is even possible)? Are we to cling to the modern rites and their attendant milieu uncritically and as tenaciously as some have clung to the premodern rites? How and with what authority are we to proceed? Or are we simply to descend into an ecclesial and liturgical subjectivism which mirrors that of postmodern society?
Modernity, Liturgy, and Authority
It is perhaps ironic that he who would become known as the “Hammer of Modernism” in the early twentieth century, Pope St Pius X, is the very same pope responsible for giving to the Church the great impetus for contemporary liturgical renewal by means of his appeal made in the first months of his pontificate in 1903:
It being our ardent desire to see the true Christian spirit restored in every respect and preserved by all the faithful, we deem it necessary to provide before everything else for the sanctity and dignity of the temple, in which the faithful assemble for the object of acquiring this spirit from its indispensable fount, which is the active participation in the holy mysteries and in the public and solemn prayer of the Church (Motu proprio, Tra le sollecitudini, 22 November 1903).
This call for universal and true participation in the Sacred Liturgy – something relatively novel at the beginning of the twentieth century (but in reality a call for the “restoration” of an ancient but long-since ignored treasure) – resulted in many and varied initiatives which we group together under the title of the “twentieth century liturgical movement.”1
Pius X’s insistence that real participation in the Sacred Liturgy was essential arose from his experience as a pastor as a fruit of the work of liturgical pioneers in the nineteenth century, such as Dom Prosper Guéranger of Solesmes. His motivation was pastoral in the true meaning of that word (in the sense of shepherding his flock to the eternal pastures of heaven): he judged this ancient but discarded practice to be essential for the good of the Church.
Some six decades later the Second Vatican Council would reiterate Pius X’s words in article 14 of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy in its own insistence that:
In the restoration and promotion of the Sacred Liturgy the full and active/actual participation by all the people is the aim to be considered before all else, for it is the primary and indispensible source from which the faithful are to derive the true Christian spirit.
It is important that we note that this judgment of both a pope and an Ecumenical Council in respect of the restoring and promoting liturgical participation has two motivations. The first arises from the nature of the Sacred Liturgy itself: the liturgy is nothing other than “the primary and indispensable source from which the faithful are to derive the true Christian spirit.” The second is clearly pastoral: the more fully that Christians participate in the Sacred Liturgy the more fully they will imbibe the true Christian spirit for the eternal good of their souls and of that of others through the advancement of the mission of the Church in the world.
Let us be clear: the cornerstone of the twentieth century liturgical movement, which is the sine qua non of the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, does not arise from modernism. Nor is it a self-conscious attempt by the Church to appease the modern world. Rather, the call for actual participation in the Sacred Liturgy is a judicious pastoral judgement grounded in the nature of the liturgy, indeed the nature of Christian life itself. Certainly, the circumstances of the modern world (and, we trust, the Holy Spirit) prompted Pius X and the Council to this wise judgment, but it was a judgment made with eyes fixed on Christ, not on the world.
From this, I submit, we are able to articulate a principle of how liturgy, authority, and modernity interrelate which shall serve us well:Authority acts authentically in regard to the Sacred Liturgy when it acts in a manner that respects and is utterly consonant with its nature so as to optimize the good of souls. We find this in the development of the liturgy throughout history, whether that be in its gradual development which authority witnesses and respects, or even in the occasional but always proportionate introduction by authority of elements into the rites, or even its similarly proportionate pruning of them. So too this principle may be found in the repudiation of inauthentic liturgical developments such as the sixteenth century breviary of Cardinal Quignonez or of the eighteenth century Synod of Pistoia.
As the twentieth century liturgical movement progressed and ‘got on’ with the business of promoting participation in the Sacred Liturgy as it were, a certain self-consciousness arose. Its cause may be articulated thus: the Liturgy in which the Liturgical Movement sought to bring about greater participation assumed a Christian culture and yet the modern world had long since left that culture behind. One writer in the late 1920s articulated the problem clearly when he wrote:
The most significant mark of a Christian culture is an appreciation not only of the unity of Christendom, but also of the Christian orientation of every human activity; when the Church is regarded as that divine being in which redeemed mankind can realise its position in the hierarchy of creation, then the Christian approach to any problem is naturally adopted. Whether that problem be the making of a building, of a picture, or of a prayer, is of no account; in its execution the work will be signed with the mark of Christianity, for this is of the very life of the workman. In such circumstances the art of the Liturgy is most properly and reasonably cultivated. It is natural to the people, nor is there any self-consciousness in the ‘participation in the public and solemn prayer of the Church.’ The manner in which it is carried out is the effect and not the cause of a manner of living.
With the disappearance of the mentality that produced that mode of life, the Liturgy is found to be no longer a part of the life of the people. In its place have arisen those expressions of devotion which are to the Liturgy what every modern corruption is to the reality for which it is substituted. There is need for reform—but at which end shall the reformers start? They have apparently attempted to cure the disease by removing those symptoms only which appear on the surface. There can be no doubt—any parish priest can verify this—that even to this day the prayer which is offered up publicly is of a nature which is consonant with and produced by the culture of the congregation. You may cut down their ‘devotions’ and drive them to Vespers in the evening, but their attendance, as a general rule, at these services is unnatural and incompatible with the principles upon which their daily life is built. It is these which must first be changed.2
Protagonists of liturgical renewal had to confront the reality of the cultural disparity between modernity and the Sacred Liturgy. The there were two options: to change the world, or to change the Liturgy.
As we know, the Second Vatican Council judged that, in the light of the changed circumstances of the modern world, a moderate general reform of the liturgical rites was apposite for the pastoral good of the Church, enjoining “that sound tradition…be retained, and yet the way remain open to legitimate progress,” insisting that there be “no innovations unless the good of the Church genuinely and certainly requires them; and [that] care must be taken that any new forms adopted should in some way grow organically from forms already existing” (Sacrosanctum Concilium, 23).
As with the Council’s adoption of Pius X’s call for liturgical participation in article 14 of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, it is difficult to see in the principles outlined here anything other than an exercise of collegial and papal authority for the good of the Church in the light of modern circumstances in a manner which respects the nature of the Sacred Liturgy as an intrinsically traditional living organism capable of proportionate development in accordance with the true needs of the Church. The Council of Trent operated from similar principles. We ought not to forget that it considered the pastoral value of such possibilities as the use of the vernacular in the liturgy and the reception of Holy Communion under both species. Liturgical reform and development cannot be excluded a priori.
Today there is an increasing body of material available from those involved in the reform of the Sacred Liturgy following the Second Vatican Council, as well as credible new scholarship emerging, which demonstrates that what resulted from the call for a moderate general reform of the liturgy was not that which the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council intended but rather a product of the desires, opportunistic triumphs, and even the ideological agendas of key persons who took control of the implementation of the reform.
Louis Bouyer, a member from March 1966 onward at the personal request of Blessed Paul VI, of the body established to implement the Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, the Consilium ad Exsequendam Constitutionem de Sacra Liturgia, reflects:
I should not like to be too harsh on this commission’s labours. It numbered a certain number of genuine scholars and more than one experienced and judicious pastor. Under different circumstances, they might have accomplished excellent work. Unfortunately, on the one hand, a deadly error in judgment placed the official leadership of this committee in the hands of a man who, though generous and brave, was not very knowledgeable: Cardinal Lercaro. He was utterly incapable of resisting the manoeuvres of the mealy-mouthed scoundrel that the Neapolitan Vincentian, Bugnini, a man as bereft of culture as he was of basic honesty, soon revealed himself to be.3
One can perhaps understand why Kevin W. Irwin’s review of the two English editions of Bouyer’s Memoirs opines that: “…we did not need these memoirs; I, for one, would have preferred that he had not written them.”4 But what Irwin seeks to dismiss as a “sad book, reflective of one who comes across as a very sad man,”5 does bear witness to a reality that cannot itself be dismissed: the fact that the work of the Consilium was controversial if not profoundly flawed from its inception in January 1964 through to its suppression at the establishment of the new Sacred Congregation for Divine Worship in April 1970.
The diaries of Father Ferdinando Antonelli, OFM, an official of the Congregation of Rites (and its Archbishop Secretary from 1965-1969) and someone well experienced in the work of liturgical reform from the 1940’s onward – and by no means opposed to it – bear this out. He was amongst the few priests named as a full member of the Consilium in March 1964.
Of the first meeting of the Consilium in March 1964 he notes: “Things are still nebulous. These are grandiose projects, but it will not be easy to realise them.”6 After the second meeting his concern develops. He writes:
I am not enthusiastic about this work…It is merely an assembly of people, many of them incompetent, and others well advanced on the road to novelty. The discussions are extremely hurried. Discussions are based on impressions and the voting is chaotic. What is most displeasing is that the expositive Promemorias and the relative questions are drawn up in advanced terms and often in a very suggestive form…It is unpleasant to find that questions which, in themselves are not very important but which have serious consequences, should be discussed and decided by an organ which functions such as this.7
Later, Antonelli would reflect:
That which is sad… however, is a fundamental datum, a mutual attitude, a pre-established position, namely, many of those who have influenced the reform…and others, have no love, and no veneration of that which has been handed down to us. They begin by despising everything that is actually there. This negative mentality is unjust and pernicious, and unfortunately, Paul VI tends a little to this side. They have all the best intentions, but with this mentality they have only been able to demolish and not to restore.8
Even Archbishop Bugnini himself would admit of exceeding the Council’s provisions for a limited introduction of the vernacular by rapidly pushing for a complete vernacularisation of the whole liturgy, and would boast that in respect of the reform, fortune favoured the brave.9
The contemporary scholarship of Dr Lauren Pristas of Caldwell College has painstakingly laid bare the theological motives if not ideologies behind the reform of the orations in the missal produced by the Consilium and promulgated by Paul VI. As a perusal of the succeeding issues of Antiphon: A Journal for Liturgical Renewal demonstrates, various members of the Society of Catholic Liturgy and other scholars have similarly contributed to exposing a self-conscious concern to reform the liturgy according to the perceived needs of modern man, leaving behind “sound tradition” at will, pushing for progress and innovation seemingly as ends in themselves with little or no care for any organic development of liturgical forms from those already existing. I myself have attempted to study the Council’s and the Consilium’s work on the reform of the Ordo Missae in a 2006 Antiphon article and in my presentations to the last two Sacra Liturgia conferences, in London in 2016 and in Milan in June of this year.
It is true that article 4 of the Constitution states: “The Council…desires that, where necessary, the rites be revised carefully in the light of sound tradition, and that they be given new vigour to meet the circumstances and needs of modern times.” Read partially and in isolation this article could be said to authorise the creation of a brand new liturgy according to the perceived needs of ‘modern man’. But read in context and as part of the whole Constitution (which includes article 23 cited earlier) – as did the Fathers of the Council who overwhelmingly approved the Constitution – article 4 calls for a moderate reform of the Sacred Liturgy so that the liturgy itself will have a renewed vigour in respect of modern man.
Where was authority in respect of the implementation of the liturgical reform? It is clear that the authority of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy itself was all too easily set aside as key players sought to have initiatives and even personal enthusiasms endorsed in its name, at times in spite of such initiatives having nothing whatsoever to do with the Council or the Constitution itself. First amongst these reforms aimed at creating a new liturgy for the modern world was the total vernacularisation of the liturgy mentioned earlier. The rapid promotion of Mass celebrated facing the people, the enthusiastic introduction of new Eucharistic prayers, and the creeping concession of permission for the reception of Holy Communion in the hand are but three other examples.
Each of these ‘reforms’ was effected, ironically, by the utterly premodern exercise of absolute papal positivism. For the papal positivist the Pope’s will is sovereign and unquestionable. This positivism (ultramontanism by another name)—which is alive and well down to our own times—is a critical factor in the study of the implementation of the reform. Paul VI personally approved the details of the reform in forma specifica. To obtain his signature was to win the day.
Too few people are aware of the extent of the politics and of the spirit of opportunism in which the reform was affected. Any yet it was a reality. Whilst the reforms mentioned above were ‘achieved,’ some which were proposed to Paul VI by Bugnini as the will of the Consilium were not. In this respect Bugnini’s 1968 complaint about the lamentable intransigence of Paul VI in his refusal to abolish the abolition the sign of the cross at the beginning of Mass, the Confiteor, the Orate Fratres and even of the Roman canon—the sentinel of substantial unity in the Roman rite—is noteworthy.10
If we ask whether the resultant compromise, the Missal of Paul VI promulgated in 1970, is an example of authority acting in regard to the Sacred Liturgy in a manner that respects and is utterly consonant with its nature so as to optimise the good of souls, we must take pause. For there is much evidence that those responsible for what the supreme authority promulgated had their eyes fixed more on modernity, certain related ideologies, and their own personal preferences rather than on Christ alive and acting in the millennial liturgical tradition of the Church. The resultant product (we may even say “products”, for the same reality is more or less true mutatis mutandis of the reform of the other liturgical books) betray a self-conscious desire to conform to modernity rather than the pursuit of a judicious development of the rite so as to give it renewed vigor in the light of the circumstances and needs of modern times. The distinction is subtle, but real: in the liturgical reform following the Council the tail of modernity wagged the dog, and not the dog the tail.
In her masterful analysis of modern liturgical reform, After Writing: On the Liturgical Consummation of Philosophy, Catherine Pickstock identifies another factor present in the post-conciliar reform. She writes:
Because of [the] reciprocal link between life and liturgy, any liturgical reform must take account of the fact that the liturgy which it seeks to revise was as much, or more a cultural and ethical phenomenon, as a textual one. Now, criticisms of liturgical reform, such as those implicit in what I have just said, are often dismissed as conservative or nostalgic. But because the Vatican II reforms of the medieval Roman rite failed to take into account the cultural assumptions which lay implicit within the text, their reforms participated in an entirely more sinister conservatism. For they failed to challenge those structures of the modern secular world which are wholly inimical to liturgical purpose: those structures, indeed, which perpetuate a separation of everyday life from liturgical enactment.11
Pickstock is no antediluvian conservative. She is clear that her “criticisms of the Vatican II revisions of the medieval Roman rite…far from enlisting a conservative horror at change, issue from a belief that the revisions were simply not radical enough.” She argues that “a successful liturgical revision would have to involve a revolutionary re-invention of language and practice which would challenge the structures of our modern world, and only thereby restore real language and liturgy.”12
This assertion of an utter failure of the liturgical reform to in fact create a liturgy that could speak to modernity is striking in its assertion of the profound cultural and philosophical naiveté of the reform itself. It was indeed a reform of texts with little regard for the culture in which they took flesh, liturgical or secular. And if Bouyer and Antonelli are right about its principal protagonists and the modi operandi employed, the philosophical subtleties of that with which they were dealing were seemingly simply beyond their grasp.
Given the principles laid down in the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy which insist on the retention of sound tradition and on the organic development of the liturgy, we cannot follow the Anglican Pickstock’s utterly postmodern call for a revolutionary re-invention of liturgical language and practice. But we can profit from her profound insights into the inadequacy of the reformed liturgical books as modern.
For if the whole point of the liturgical reform was to find ways in which better to meet the circumstances and needs of modern times, it would seem that we missed the mark not only due to the petty Roman power plays pursuing positivistic papal approbation, but also because of their failure to do the required philosophical and cultural homework. The resultant products may, then, be critiqued both in terms of the liturgical principles articulated by the Council itself and in respect of the modernity they were intended to address.
Before proceeding I ought to state that in speaking of these liturgical “products” thus, I doubt neither their validity nor the reality that in the ensuing decades they have been at the heart of the life of faith and prayer of many generations who have celebrated them worthily and in good faith and who have worshipped in spirit and in truth thereby. However, at an academic conference it is appropriate to critique their production, content, and effect in the search for appropriate paths for the future—out of fidelity to the Council and indeed to Christ Himself who lives and acts in the Sacred Liturgy of His Holy Church. For what the reformers and indeed the Council anticipated – a new springtime in the life of the Church and of her liturgy – has simply not come to pass. There are undoubtedly many factors to consider in respect of this, but the modern rites certainly feature amongst them. We have to face the fact that they do not of themselves retain or attract vast numbers of our modern or postmodern contemporaries.
Liturgy and Authority in the Postmodern World
In 1968 Louis Bouyer made a most astonishing claim:
There is practically no liturgy worthy of the name today in the Catholic Church. Yesterday’s liturgy was hardly more than an embalmed cadaver. What people call liturgy today is little more than this same cadaver decomposed…Perhaps in no other area is there a greater distance (and even formal opposition) between what the Council worked out and what we actually have. Under the pretext of ‘adapting’ the liturgy, people have simply forgotten that it can only be the traditional expression of the Christian mystery in all its spring-like fullness. I have perhaps spent the greater part of my priestly life in attempting to explain it. But now I have the impression, and I am not alone, that those who took it upon themselves to apply (?) the Council’s directives on this point have turned their backs deliberately on what Beauduin, Casel and Pius Parsch had set out to do, and to which I had tried vainly to add some small contribution…”13
Bouyer may have been (well, he was!) given to provocation, but he had a point. Certainly, there are parishes and religious communities, especially monasteries, where the spirit and power of the liturgy has breathed freely these past decades (at times not without cost), but they have been far fewer than they ought to have been.
Bouyer’s criticism was not isolated. Writing in 2004 of the Neoscholastic reductionism and theological disconnection with the living form of the liturgy that the liturgical movement had attempted to overcome, Cardinal Ratzinger asserted that: “Anyone who, like me, was moved by this perception at the time of the liturgical movement on the eve of the Second Vatican Council can only stand, deeply sorrowing, before the ruins of the very things they were concerned for.”14
Writing in Antiphon in 2002 the then Professor Gerhard Ludwig Müller asserted that “in many countries the euphoria of the liturgical movement has given way to disillusionment.” “Modern man, formed by secularism and by an environment both immanentist and secular,” he observed, “no longer understands the individual rites and gestures of the liturgy,” and insisted that nothing less than “a sanatio in radice” (a healing in the very roots of the matter) is necessary.15
Bouyer laments deviations in the reforms following the Council. Müller highlights the profound cultural crisis. Cardinal Ratzinger, I think it is fair to say, shares both concerns whilst underlining the profound theological nature of the Sacred Liturgy as ritual.
Bouyer continued with a suggestion that may provide a route to a sanatio in radice. “When one has thrown everything out, people will have to return to these sources,” he said.16 What might such a ressourcement include? What paths might we pursue in healing the wounds of past decades?
The sources to which Bouyer was referring were the writings of the leaders of the classic liturgical movement: Lambert Beauduin, Odo Casel, and Pius Parsch. To this list we might add Romano Guardini, Virgil Michel, Idlefons Herwegen, and others, and certainly their seminal writings are excellent sources for formation in “the spirit and power of the liturgy”17. I would add that in truth these are writings more for digestion as lectio divina than for study: their treasures are at times too rich for but one reading.
In addition to this I would like to propose three further elements for a possible sanatio in radice, for liturgical ressourcement at the beginning of the twenty-first century. There are undoubtedly others, but I think these are of particular importance today.
The first is that we renew our understanding of precisely what Catholic liturgy isand that we are perfectly clear of the nature of Catholic liturgical tradition. For Catholic liturgy is intentionally distinct from the public rituals of modern and postmodern society (and we imitate them at our peril).
To borrow the words of His Eminence, Robert Cardinal Sarah, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, we can say that:
Catholic liturgy is the singularly privileged locus of Christ’s saving action in our world today, by means of real participation in which we receive His grace and strength which is so necessary for our perseverance and growth in the Christian life. It is the divinely instituted place where we come to fulfil our duty of offering sacrifice to God, of offering the One True Sacrifice. It is where we realise our profound need to worship Almighty God. Catholic liturgy is something sacred, something which is holy by its very nature. Catholic liturgy is no ordinary human gathering…
God, not man is at the centre of Catholic liturgy. We come to worship Him. The liturgy is not about you and I; it is not where we celebrate our own identity or achievements or exalt or promote our own culture and local religious customs. The liturgy is first and foremost about God and what He has done for us. In His Divine Providence Almighty God founded the Church and instituted the Sacred Liturgy by means of which we are able to offer Him true worship in accordance with the New Covenant established by Christ. In doing this, in entering into the demands of the sacred rites developed in the tradition of the Church, we are given our true identity and meaning as sons and daughters of the Father.18
Catholic liturgy, then, intentionally has its eyes firmly focussed on Almighy God and not modernity, postmodernity, or any other culture or philosophy. It has, as Sacrosanctum Concilium taught, fundamental place in the Christian life as the source and summit of the life and mission of the Church (see: n. 10). Catholic liturgy is normative for the life of the Christian, and enjoys an objectivity in that its content is not subject to the passing fashions of each generation – or to the peculiar tastes of given priests or bishops – but is handed down in tradition with integrity whilst being proportionately persuadable according to true pastoral need. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, Catholic Liturgy is a singularly privileged and an objective and constituent element of Christian Tradition (see: n. 1124).
It is clear that the Sacred Liturgy is, then, of its nature antithetical to postmodern culture’s exaltation of subjectivity an all areas of life, most especially to the Church’s central claim to present the Truth as revealed by God to mankind. Catherine Pickstock presents a fascinating appraisal of this confrontation when she asserts: “A genuine liturgical reform…would either have to overthrow our anti-ritual modernity, or, that being impossible, devise a liturgy that refused to be enculturated in our modern habits of thought and speech.” Pickstock argues for the creation of a liturgy that “would have more actively to challenge us through the shock of a defamiliarising language” so as “to live only to worship, and to be in community only as recipients of the gift of the body of Christ.”19
Pickstock is correct in stating that the liturgy must refuse subserviently to go down the paths of modernity, and indeed that its unfamiliarity can and does serve as a salutary shock for those well advanced along those paths. We may do well to ponder this in our pastoral ministry. One must part company with Pickstock in her desire merely to construct liturgy as one might a civic ceremony (howsoever well she may do so). However, in future liturgical development her lesson that liturgy that is antithetical to the mores of postmodernity has a positive value needs to be learnt, and learnt well.
The second element of ressourcement that I would propose follows from Pickstock’s underlining of the value of liturgy that is culturally ‘unfamiliar’ and which refuses to be dominated by postmodern culture. We do not have to look very far for this resource, for it alive and well in the Church today, indeed it has found new life and is growing. I speak, of course, of the usus antiquior of the Roman rite – of the more ancient liturgical rites in use prior to the liturgical reform following the Council – now happily freely available for more than ten years to clergy, religious and laity who wish to celebrate them.
Anyone who has studied a liturgical history course in recent decades has been taught at one time or another that the ‘old’ pre-conciliar liturgy was to be dismissed as corrupt in so many ways, as non-participatory, clericalist, etc. However, medieval historians such as Eamon Duffy have given the lie to the claim that no one could or did participate in premodern liturgy. Indeed Boston College’s Virginia Reinburg argues that in the late medieval period “the clergy expected lay people to participate in the liturgy in a distinctive way—a way distinguishable from the clergy’s more doctrinally instructed participation, but possessing its own integrity.” “Late medieval liturgy,” she asserts, “can be viewed as the establishment of social and spiritual solidarity among God, the Church, and the lay community.”20
So too our own experience of the usus antiquior these past ten years – and even here in Philadelphia a fortnight ago on September 14th – testifies to the reality that participation in pre-modern liturgical forms is both possible and has a pastoral value in the life of the Church in the postmodern world, particularly amongst the young who experience therein a refusal of postmodernity that encompasses the embrace of all that is true, beautiful and good.
The free and optimal celebration of the usus antiquior in all its richness, I would argue, is a key element for liturgical ressourcement in our day. No one wishes to go backwards or to return to the days of low Mass muttered in but minutes. And the usus antiquior is not going to make a clean sweep of our parishes any time soon. Yet, it is difficult to know how liturgical ministers, formators, and scholars can move forward in their vocations and professions without themselves having sufficient familiarity with its riches. For its premodern ways have much to teach us as we strive to celebrate the Sacred Liturgy authentically in the postmodern world.
The third element of ressourcement I hold to be crucial is that we are utterly clear about the nature of authority in respect of the liturgy. I have spoken about the role of papal positivism or ultramontanism in the postconciliar reform. We see this today in respect of the question of liturgical translation. Without making any comment here on the motivation and content of the recent Motu proprio Magnum Principium, I would ask whether we must expect a new magisterial document on vernacular translations, or on other liturgical matters, every time white smoke issues forth from the Sistine Chapel? Surely there are applicable principles which do not change according to each successive pope?
The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches one such principle:
Even the supreme authority in the Church may not change the Liturgy arbitrarily, but only in the obedience of faith and with religious respect for the mystery of the Liturgy (n. 1125).
Cardinal Ratzinger expanded on this in his work The Spirit of the Liturgy.
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.21
As Pope Benedict XVI, Ratzinger would speak similarly of the exercise of the whole Petrine office in his 7 May 2005 homily in the Lateran Cathedral on the occasion of taking possession of the Chair of the Bishop of Rome.
The exercise of authority in respect of the Sacred Liturgy then, is something requiring profound humility and careful discernment in respect of the integrity of liturgical tradition. Authority acts authentically in regard to the Sacred Liturgy when it acts in a manner that respects and is utterly consonant with its nature so as to optimise the good of souls. Pure positivism, whether papal, episcopal, priestly, or bureaucratic has no rightful place in relation to Catholic liturgy. And yet we know that it has claimed such a place too often, and that it sometimes does so today. Everyone who exercises liturgical ministry and authority should examine their consciences carefully on this point.
It must also be said that where positivism has been visited upon liturgical tradition a conservative yet uncritical acceptance of its results, whilst understandable, is not acceptable—above all on the part of those in positions of liturgical and pastoral leadership. For such uncritical stances perpetuate the problem. Rather, our task is faithfully to examine current liturgical realities in the light of the theological nature of the Sacred Liturgy and in the light of what has been done to the liturgy in recent history in an attempt to identify future paths for the Church’s liturgical life, and even future liturgical reform, that will be paved with probity.
In this context the consideration of a reform of the liturgical reform that followed the Council, of possible areas of mutual enrichment between the older and more recent uses of the Roman rite, or even of moving towards some form of liturgical reconciliation between the two (without disenfranchising anyone) should be pursued in charity and equanimity. Ecclesiastical authority should, in my opinion, facilitate such a consideration by freely allowing such discourse and perhaps even by taking prudent and proportionate initial steps towards the realisation of some of the more apparent needs in these areas.
There are, as I said, many other ways in which we might move towards the sanatio in radice that Cardinal Müller thought necessary fifteen years ago. I submit that these three feature prominently amongst them and are worthy of consideration.
Conclusion
As our self-consciously modern liturgical rites approach their fiftieth birthdays we would do well not to cling to them uncritically. Nor can we follow postmodernity down paths of ecclesial and liturgical subjectivism. Rather, with a renewed appreciation of the riches of the Church’s living liturgical tradition, let us seek ways of celebrating “the traditional expression of the Christian mystery in all its spring-like fullness” that are both faithful to that tradition and apposite for the needs of postmodern society. But let us take care that the dog wags the tail, not the tail the dog.
ENDNOTES:
1 For a comprehensive bibliography of the various stages of the Twentieth Century Liturgical Movement see: Alcuin Reid, The Organic Development of the Liturgy, 2nd edn. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2005).
2 Cited in Reid, The Organic Development of the Liturgy, p, 94.
3 John Pepino (trans.) The Memoirs of Louis Bouyer Memoirs (Kettering: Angelico Press 2015) pp. 218-19.
9 See: Annibale Bugnini, The Reform of the Liturgy 1948-1975 (Collegeville: Liturgical Press 1990) p. 11, 110.
10 See: Alcuin Reid, “After Sacrosantum Concilium – Continuity or Rupture” in A Reid. (ed.) T&T Clark Companion to Liturgy (London: Bloomsbury 2016) pp. 297-316, p. 309.
11 Catherine Pickstock, After Writing: On the Liturgical Consummation of Philosophy (Oxford: Blackwell 1998) p. 171.
13 Louis Bouyer, The Decomposition of Catholicism (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press 1969) p.105. Emphasis added.
14 Preface to: Reid, The Organic Development of the Liturgy,p. 11.
15 Gerhard Ludwig Müller, “Can Mankind understand the Spirit of the Liturgy Anymore?” Antiphon, vol. 7 (2002) n. 2, pp. 2-5, pp. 2, 3.
16 Bouyer, The Decomposition of Catholicism, p.105.
17 For bibliographical references see: Alcuin Reid “Thoroughly imbued with the spirit and power of the liturgy – Sacrosanctum Concilium and Liturgical Formation” in A. Reid (ed.) Sacred Liturgy: The Source and Summit of the Life and Mission of the Church (San Francisco: Ignatius Press 2014) pp. 213-236, pp.229-230.
18 Robert Cardinal Sarah, “Towards an Authentic Implementation of Sacrosanctum Concilium” in U.M. Lang (ed.) Authentic Liturgical Renewal in Contemporary Perspective (London: Bloomsbury 2017) pp 3-19, p. 5.
20 Virginia Reinburg, “Liturgy and the Laity in Late Medieval and Reformation France” The Sixteenth Century Journal 23 (1992), pp. 526-47.pp. 529, 542.
21 Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy (San Francisco: Ignatius Press 2000) p. 166.
Dom Alcuin Reid, a monk of the Monastère Saint-Benoît in the Diocese of Fréjus-Toulon, France, a liturgical scholar of international renown, is the author and editor of numerous liturgical publications including the T&T Clark Companion to Liturgy (Bloomsbury 2016) and The Organic Development of the Liturgy (Ignatius, 2005).
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Billy Graham is now 96 years-old with Parkinson’s disease. In January, 2000 civic leaders in Charlotte, North Carolina, invited their favorite son, Billy Graham, to a luncheon in his honor.
Billy initially hesitated to accept the invitation because he struggles with Parkinson’s disease. But the Charlotte leaders said, ‘We don’t expect a major address. Just come and let us honor you and respond with a few words!’ So he agreed.
After wonderful things were said about him, Dr. Graham stepped to the rostrum, looked at the crowd, and said, “I’m reminded today of Albert Einstein, the great physicist who this month has been honored by Time Magazine as the Man of the Century.
Einstein was once traveling from Princeton on a train when the conductor came down the aisle, punching the tickets of every passenger. When he came to Einstein, Einstein reached in his vest pocket. He couldn’t find his ticket, so he reached in his trouser pockets. It wasn’t there. He looked in his briefcase but couldn’t find it. Then he looked in the seat beside him. He still couldn’t find it. The conductor said, ‘Dr. Einstein, I know who you are. We all know who you are. I’m sure you bought a ticket. Don’t worry about it.’
Einstein nodded appreciatively. The conductor continued down the aisle punching tickets. As he was ready to move to the next car, he turned around and saw the great physicist down on his hands and knees looking under his seat for his ticket.
The conductor rushed back and said, ‘Dr. Einstein, Dr. Einstein, don’t worry, I know who you are; no problem. You don’t need a ticket. I’m sure you bought one.’
Einstein looked at him and said, “Young man, I too, know who I am. What I don’t know is where I’m going.”
Having said that Billy Graham continued:
“See the suit I’m wearing? It’s a brand new suit. My children, and my grandchildren are telling me I’ve gotten a little slovenly in my old age. I used to be a bit more fastidious.. So I went out and bought a new suit for this luncheon and one more occasion. You know what that occasion is? This is the suit in which I’ll be buried. But when you hear I’m dead, I don’t want you to immediately remember the suit I’m wearing. I want you to remember this: I not only know who I am. I also know where I’m going.”
May your troubles be less, your blessings more, and may nothing but happiness, come through your door. Life without God is like an unsharpened pencil – it has no point.”
Amen and peace, my friends. And may each of us live our lives so that when our ticket is punched we don’t have to worry about where we are going.
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[ Emphasis and {commentary} in red type by Abyssum ]
Boudway vs. Murray is not even close
October 25, 2017
The nonchalance with which some non-canonists try to argue canon law with canon lawyers these days verges on the remarkable. But, folks, these aren’t fair fights; they are scarcely even interesting. The latest example is Matthew Boudway over at Commonweal.
Somehow Boudway has gotten it into his head that Fr. Gerald Murray (J.C.D., Gregorian University, 1998) thinks that the Catholic Church holds that “all valid marriages are indissoluble” even though the Code of Canon Law (which apparently Boudway looked at the other day) indicates a few instances wherein valid marriages can be dissolved (i.e., the papal dissolution of non-consummated sacramental marriages and of certain non-sacramental marriages per Canon 1142and the Pauline Privilege dissolution of marriage per Canons 1143-1147). Thinking he has fingered a truth that Murray should find inconvenient, Boudway wonders why Murray (who opposes the assault on the Church’s teaching on marriage being conducted under cover of Amoris laetitia) is not embarrassed by these supposed examples of “the Catholic Church … condoning a narrow category of adultery for much of its history.”
Yes, it’s embarrassing, alright. For Boudway.
I’ll do this quickly.
The Catholic Church does not teach that “all valid marriages are indissoluble”. She teaches, more precisely than Boudway grasps, that all valid marriages are ‘intrinsically indissoluble’ (not a happy adjective, but one that trained canonists understand in this context) meaning that the parties to a valid marriage (be it natural, merely sacramental, or sacramental and consummated) cannot dissolve it. There are no exceptions to the intrinsic indissolubility of marriage. None.
The notion of intrinsic indissolubility leaves open the possibility, however, that an ‘extrinsic’ power might, might, under certain, unusual-to-rare, circumstances be able to dissolve a valid marriage (say a pope with regard to non-sacramental marriage between a baptized and a non-baptized party); that a subsequent marriage might dissolve a non-sacramental marriage between two non-baptized persons (the Pauline Privilege); or even that a sacramental but non-consummated marriage could be dissolved by papal act (the ‘Petrine Privilege’). But these cases are not “exceptions” to some ‘rule’ whereby all valid marriages are supposedly ‘extrinsically‘ indissoluble because such a rule does not exist.
What rule does exist, as Murray knows, and as the Church has held since her inception, is the rule now set out in Canon 1141 (but incredibly not cited by Boudway!) that: “A marriage that is ratified [i.e., between two baptized parties] and consummated [i.e., the conjugal act has taken place between the spouses] can be dissolved by no human power (i.e., not a pope, not the state, and not the parties) and by no cause, except death” (my emphasis). Period. End of discussion.
In short: Valid, consummated marriage between two baptized people is (intrinsically and extrinsically) indissoluble (see Canon 1056) except by death; persons in such marriages attempting other marriages enter a state of “public and permanent adultery” (CCC 2384) and thus may not be admitted to holy Communion (Canon 915).
Fr. Murray understands this perfectly and proclaims it faithfully.
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“Fatima 100 Years Later: A Marian Call for the Whole Church”
A TALK BY RAYMOND LEO CARDINAL BURKE
The Buckfast Abbey Conference Centre
Buckfast, Devon, England
12 October 2017
Fatima, 100 Years Later:
A Message at the Heart of Faith
[ Emphasis and {commentary} in red type by Abyssum ]
The Virgin Mother of God appeared to the three shepherd children at Cova da Iria near Fatima in 1917, at a time when the world was in a terrible crisis, a crisis which threatened its very future, a crisis which, in many and frightening ways, continues to threaten the future of man and of the world. It is a crisis which has also infected the life of the Church, not, of course, touching the objective reality of Christ’s life in the Church for our salvation but, rather, obscuring and manipulating the Church from within for purposes alien to her nature and thus poisonous for souls.
The immediate manifestation of the crisis was the rise and spread of communism, but its root is an abandonment of faith in God and in His plan for our eternal salvation, as He, from the Creation, has written it into nature, and, above all, inscribed it upon the human heart. It is the abandonment of the Mystery of Faith, an indifference, disregard or even hostility to the supreme reality of the Redemptive Incarnation of God the Son by which God the Father has won for man eternal salvation, the Indwelling of God the Holy Spirit, of divine grace, in the human heart. Thus man can truly live in communion with God, in accord with His plan for His creation. Christ has won for man the gift of His own life, so that man may attain eternal life, while preparing the world for its transformation, in accord with God’s plan, that is, for the inauguration of “new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells” (2 Pet 3: 13).
The Church’s technical term for the abandonment of the faith is apostasy. The English word comes from the Greek word for secession, apo istamai, a drawing away from. In the Church, it has been used to describe the state of someone who has received the gift of faith but then has, in some way, abandoned the faith, and also the state of someone who has embraced either the vocation to the priesthood and then has abandoned the clerical state, or has embraced the vocation to the consecrated life and then has abandoned it. Thus the Church speaks of apostasy from the faith, apostasy from Holy Orders, and apostasy from religion. While my reflection concerns the first meaning of apostasy, that is, apostasy from the faith, I mention the other two uses of the term as illustrative of the fundamental nature of apostasy: the drawing away from a divine grace which first had been given by God and received by man.
Since apostasy is committed by a man who has received the gift of faith, that is, has known God and His Divine Law, it is a sin against religion, an act of injustice before God. Thus Saint Thomas Aquinas declares:
Apostasy denotes a backsliding from God. This may happen in various ways according to the different kinds of union between man and God. For, in the first place, man is united to God by faith; secondly, by having his will duly submissive in obeying His commandments; thirdly, by certain special things pertaining to supererogation, such as the religious life, the clerical state, or Holy Orders. Now if that which follows be removed, that which precedes, remains. But the converse does not hold. Accordingly a man may apostatize from God, by withdrawing from the religious life to which he was bound by profession, or from the holy Order which he had received: and this is called apostasy from religious life or Orders. A man may also apostatize from God, by rebelling in his mind against the Divine commandments: and though man may apostatize in both the above ways, he may still remain united to God by faith.
But if he give up the faith, then he seems to turn away from God altogether: and consequently, apostasy simply and absolutely is that whereby a man withdraws from the faith, and is called apostasy of perfidy. In this way apostasy, simply so called, pertains to unbelief (Summa Theologica, II-II, q. 12).
In addressing certain objections, Saint Thomas Aquinas explains the very concrete nature of apostasy. In response to an objection regarding the nature of apostasy, that is whether it is more an act of the will than of the intellect, Saint Thomas writes:
It belongs to faith not only that the heart should believe, but also that external words and deeds should bear witness to that inward faith, for confession is an act of faith. In this way, too, certain external words or deeds pertain to unbelief, in so far as they are signs of unbelief, even as a sign of health is said itself to be healthy. Now although the authority quoted may be understood as referring to every kind of apostate, yet it applies most truly to an apostate from the faith. For since faith is the first foundation of things to be hoped for, and since, without faith it is impossible to please God; when once faith is removed, man retains nothing that may be useful for the obtaining of eternal salvation, for which reason it is written (Prov. vi. 12): A man that is an apostate, an unprofitable man: because faith is the life of the soul, according to Rom. i. 17: The just man liveth by faith. Therefore, just as when the life of the body is taken away, man’s every member and part loses its due disposition, so when the life of justice, which is by faith, is done away, disorder appears in all his members. First, in his mouth, whereby chiefly his mind stands revealed; secondly, in his eyes; thirdly, in the instrument of movement; fourthly, in his will, which tends to evil. That result is that he sows discord, endeavoring to sever others from the faith even as he severed himself (Summa Theologica, II-II, q. 12, ad 2).
Saint Thomas’ explanation of the nature of apostasy recalls to our minds the prayer which the Angel of Portugal taught to the shepherd children of Fatima during the first of his three apparitions to prepare them for the apparitions of the Mother of God. The prayer expresses the inseparable unity of faith and virtue: faith in God necessarily expresses itself in love of God.
During the first vision, while telling the shepherd children not to be afraid and assuring them that he was “the Angel of Peace,” he taught them to pray three times with these words:
My God, I believe, I adore, I hope [in] and I love You. I ask pardon of You for those who do not believe, do not adore, do not hope [in] and do not love You.
God’s messenger to the shepherd children was already indicating the way in which the Mother of God would lead the world to deal with the grave crisis of apostasy: the way of faith and prayer, penance and reparation. He concluded the apparition with the words:
Pray thus. The Hearts of Jesus and Mary are attentive to the voice of your supplications.
Apostasy is distinguished from heresy, the other grave sin against the faith. Father DominicPrümmer, O.P., in his classic manual of moral theology, defines apostasy as the “total defection from the Christian faith formerly willingly received.” Apostasy is the total defection from the Catholic faith, whereas heresy is the denial of one or another article of the faith. Whereas heresy, depending upon the manner in which it is embraced, can lead to apostasy, that is, to the total abandonment of the faith, apostasy, at its root, is a total drawing away from the life of faith.
Historically, some noted theologians, like Francisco Suárez, have taught that heresy willingly embraced by someone who had before professed the Catholic faith is also a form of apostasy. One thinks, for example, of a heretic in what regards the Holy Eucharist which is the heart of the entire Catholic faith. In any case, it is helpful to distinguish heresy from apostasy, in order to underline the apostate’s drawing away from the totality of the faith.
As Father Prümmer indicates, for the apostasy to take place it is not necessary that the member of the faithful give adherence to another determinate faith, for example, Judaism or Islam, but simply, “after baptism received in the Catholic Church, defects completely from the faith.” He gives as examples those who abandon their Catholic faith as rationalists, atheists, free thinkers or strict Freemasons.
One thinks, for example, of how the Church has suffered from the persistent heretical doctrines of Modernism, as treated by Pope Saint Pius X in his first Encyclical Letter, E Supremi, of October 4, 1903. Referring to the trepidation with which he accepted the election to the See of Peter, he declared:
Then again, to omit other motives, We were terrified beyond all else by the disastrous state of human society today. For who can fail to see that society is at the present time, more than in any past age, suffering from a terrible and deep-rooted malady which, developing every day and eating into its inmost being, is dragging it to destruction? You understand, Venerable Brethren, what this disease is – apostasy from God, that which in truth nothing is more allied with ruin, according to the word of the Prophet: “For behold they that go far from Thee shall perish” (Ps. 1xxii., 17). We saw therefore that, in virtue of the ministry of the Pontificate, which was to be entrusted to Us, We must hasten to find a remedy for this great evil, considering as addressed to Us that Divine command: “Lo, I have set thee this day over the nations and over kingdoms, to root up, and to pull down, and to waste, and to destroy, and to build, and to plant” (Jerem. i., 10). But, cognizant of Our weakness, We recoiled in terror from a task as urgent as it is arduous.
How much more even today does the Roman Pontiff face the daunting challenge of a widespread apostasy from the faith.
On August 15, 1910, in his Encyclical Letter Notre Charge Apostolique, regarding the organization Le Sillon, he underlined the foundation of the ruin of the organization in an apostasy from the faith:
And now, overwhelmed with the deepest sadness, We ask Ourselves, Venerable Brethren, what has become of the Catholicism of the Sillon? Alas! this organization which formerly afforded such promising expectations, this limpid and impetuous stream, has been harnessed in its course by the modern enemies of the Church, and is now no more than a miserable affluent of the great movement of apostasy being organized in every country for the establishment of a One-World Church which shall have neither dogmas, nor hierarchy, neither discipline for the mind, nor curb for the passions, and which, under the pretext of freedom and human dignity, would bring back to the world (if such a Church could overcome) the reign of legalized cunning and force, and the oppression of the weak, and of all those who toil and suffer.
How much more even today movements for a single government of the world and certain movements with the Church herself disregard the moral law because they lack any foundation in God and in His plan for our eternal salvation.
In his Encyclical Letter Pascendi Dominici Gregis of September 8, 1907, the saintly Pontiff had shown that the heretical doctrines of Modernism flow from a rationalism and sentimentalism which draw souls away from the faith itself. He wrote about the corruption within the Church caused by the embrace of a worldly culture lacking a foundation in sound philosophy and theology. He declared:
That We make no delay in this matter is rendered necessary especially by the fact that the partisans of error are to be sought not only among the Church’s open enemies; they lie hid, a thing to be deeply deplored and feared, in her very bosom and heart, and are the more mischievous, the less conspicuously they appear. We allude, Venerable Brethren, to many who belong to the Catholic laity, nay, and this is far more lamentable, to the ranks of the priesthood itself, who, feigning a love for the Church, lacking the firm protection of philosophy and theology, nay more, thoroughly imbued with the poisonous doctrines taught by the enemies of the Church, and lost to all sense of modesty, vaunt themselves as reformers of the Church; and, forming more boldly into line of attack, assail all that is most sacred in the work of Christ, not sparing even the person of the Divine Redeemer, whom, with sacrilegious daring, they reduce to a simple, mere man.
How easily today the unthinking member of the faithful can be deceived and beguiled by appearances, attractive gestures and flashy slogans, under which the substance is poison for his soul.
Pope Saint Pius X showed how a divorce of faith from reason, inherent to a rationalist and sentimentalist approach, leads man away from God. Regarding a kind of prominent agnosticism, he wrote:
For let us return for a moment, Venerable Brethren, to that most disastrous doctrine of agnosticism…. The vast majority of mankind holds and always will hold firmly that sentiment and experience alone, when not enlightened and guided by reason, do not lead to the knowledge of God. What remains, then, but the annihilation of all religion, – atheism? ….The object of science they say is the reality of the knowable; the object of faith, on the contrary, is the reality of the unknowable. Now what makes the unknowable unknowable is its disproportion with the intelligible – a disproportion which nothing whatever, even in the doctrine of the Modernist, can suppress. Hence the unknowable remains and will eternally remain unknowable to the believer as well as to the man of science. Therefore if any religion at all is possible it can only be the religion of an unknowable reality. And why this religion might not be that universal soul of the universe, of which a rationalist speaks, is something We do see. Certainly this suffices to show superabundantly by how many roads Modernism leads to the annihilation of all religion. The first step in this direction was taken by Protestantism; the second is made by Modernism; the next will plunge headlong into atheism.
Pope Saint Pius X courageously identified a poisonous way of thinking which had been plaguing the Church for some centuries and which continues to plague the Church in our time. Pope Benedict XVI identified it strongly in his address at Westminster Hall during his historic pastoral visit to Great Britain in September of 2010. Shortly, I will present Pope Saint John Paul II’s teaching regarding the apostasy of our time as it illustrates the kind of “practical apostasy,” that is without its formal declaration.
Here it is helpful to distinguish two kinds of “exterior manifestation” of apostasy, as they are set forth in the Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique. Apostasy can be manifested externally in an explicit and formal manner, “if the member of the faithful makes known by a categorical declaration or by acts which are equivalent to a declaration, that he renounces the Catholic faith.” Such would be the case of a baptized Catholic who embraces Judaism or Islam or who, by declarations, writings and other means, announces himself to be a free thinker or atheist, or those who knowingly give their name to groups notoriously hostile to the Catholic faith.
Apostasy can also manifest itself in an implicit and interpretative manner “when a Christian without formally signifying that he renounces his faith, pretending even to treasure the title of Christian, conducts himself in such a way that one can surely conclude that he has become a stranger to the faith.” Examples are those who applaud the attacks of impiety against religion, who mock the leaders and pastors in the Church, who deride the institutions and sacred rites, the religious life, or who propose or support legislation contrary to divine law or against Church law. “There is in these exterior manifestations, when they are conscious and above all repeated, the proof that the faith has disappeared from the hearts of those who make themselves culpable for them. It is implicit apostasy.” A particular example of implicit apostasy are the “credentes apostatis,” mentioned in Church discipline:
Credentes apostatis are those who, without themselves having formally apostasized, listen willingly to apostates and, by their words or actions, approve, at least in general, their manner of thinking and of speaking.
There are also “fautores apostatis” who favor a cooperation, positive or negative, with apostasy. They are guilty of negative cooperation who “being held by office to denounce, pursue or punish apostates, fail in their obligation.”
In short, “[a]postasy is a sin against the faith, since it rejects revealed doctrine; against religion, because it denies to God true worship; against justice, since it violates the promises of the Christian.” Referring to a modern author, Jean-François Badet, who calls apostasy “spiritual suicide,” the Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique declares:
This “spiritual suicide” is, after the hatred of God, the most grave of sins, for it
more completely and definitively than the faults simply opposed to the moral
virtues separates the powers of the human soul, intelligence and will, from God.
It is clear that apostasy, either explicit or implicit, leads hearts away from the Immaculate Heart of Mary and, thus, from the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the only font of our salvation. In that regard, as the Message of Fatima makes, the pastors of the Church, who in some way cooperate with apostasy, also by their silence, bear a most heavy burden of responsibility.
Without entering into a discussion regarding whether the third part of the Secret has been
fully revealed, it seems clear from the most respected studies of the apparitions of Our Lady of Fatima, that it has to do with the diabolical forces unleashed upon the world in our time and entering into the very life of the Church which lead souls away from the truth of the faith and, therefore, from the Divine Love flowing from the glorious pierced Heart of Jesus.
On September 10, 1984, the Most Reverend Alberto Cosme do Amaral, then Bishop of Leiria-Fátima, on the basis of his studies whose conclusions had been confirmed by Sister Lucia, in a question-and-answer session at the technical university at Vienna, declared the following about the contents of the third part of the Message or Secret of Fatima:
Its content … concerns only our faith. To identify the Secret with catastrophic announcements or with a nuclear holocaust is to deform the meaning of the message.
The loss of faith of a continent is worse than the annihilation of a nation; and it is true that faith is continually diminishing in Europe.
As horrible as are the physical chastisements associated with man’s disobedient rebellion before God, infinitely more horrible are the spiritual chastisements for they have to do with the fruit of grievous sin: eternal death. As is clear, only the Faith, which places man in the relationship of unity of heart with the Sacred Heart of Jesus, through the mediation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, can save man from the spiritual chastisements which rebellion against God necessarily brings upon its perpetrators and upon the whole of both society and the Church.
The teaching of the Faith in its integrity and with courage is the heart of the office of the Church’s pastors: the Roman Pontiff, the Bishops in communion with the See of Peter, and their principal co-workers, the priests. For that reason, the Third Secret is directed, with particular force, to those who exercise the pastoral office in the Church. Their failure to teach the faith, in fidelity to the Church’s constant doctrine and practice, whether through explicit declarations and actions or through a superficial, confused or even worldly approach, or through their silence endangers mortally, in the deepest spiritual sense, the very souls for whom they have been consecrated to care spiritually. The poisonous fruits of the failure of the Church’s pastors is seen in a manner of worship, of teaching and of moral discipline which is not in accord with Divine Law.
Church discipline, down the Christian centuries, has always addressed the grave evil of apostasy and applied appropriate sanctions both to call the apostate back to the faith and to expiate the grievous harm done by apostasy. The 1917 Code of Canon Law expresses in a complete manner this discipline in can. 1325 which reads:
§ 1. The faithful of Christ are bound to profess their faith whenever their silence, evasiveness, or manner of acting encompasses an implied denial of the faith, contempt for religion, injury to God, or scandal for a neighbor.
§ 2. After the reception of baptism, if anyone, retaining the name Christian, pertinaciously denies or doubts something to be believed from the truth of divine and Catholic faith, [such a one is] a heretic; if he completely turns away from the Christian faith, [such a one is] an apostate; if finally he refuses to be under the Supreme Pontiff or refuses communion with the members of the Church subject to him, he is a schismatic.
§ 3. Let Catholics beware lest they have debates or conferences, especially public ones, with non-Catholics without having come to the Holy See or, if the cases is urgent to the local Ordinary.
Can. 751 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law contains the same discipline in a more succinct declaration: Heresy is the obstinate denial or obstinate doubt after the reception of baptism of some truth which is to be believed by divine and Catholic faith; apostasy is
the total repudiation of the Christian faith; schism is the refusal of submissionto the Supreme Pontiff or of communion with the members of the Churchsubject to him.
The more ample articulation of the 1917 Code of Canon Law is especially helpful in making clear that heresy, apostasy and schism can also be implicit by cooperation with these sins against the faith, either by action or omission.
Pope Saint John Paul II addressed the grave evil of apostasy in our time on various occasions. In his Post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation Christifideles Laici, of December 30, 1988, he wrote about “a constant spreading of an indifference to religion, of secularism and atheism” in our time, which “inspires and sustains a life lived ‘as if God did not exist’.” Regarding what could be called an implicit atheism, he declared: “This indifference to religion and the practice of religion devoid of true meaning in the face of life’s very serious problems, are not less worrying and upsetting when compared with declared atheism.”
Pope John Paul II addressed his appeal for a new evangelization in response to a constant spread of an abandonment of the faith in practice by pointing out how much philosophical positions inimical to the faith and its practice were influencing the very life of the Church. He wrote:
Without doubt a mending of the Christian fabric of society is urgently needed in all parts of the world. But for this to come about what is needed is to first remake the Christian fabric of the ecclesial community itself present in these countries and nations.
The necessary new evangelization requires that the Church herself and individual members of the Mystical Body of Christ purify themselves of the ways of thinking and acting which draw them away from Christ, which constitute a kind of implicit apostasy.
Regarding the responsibility of the lay faithful, Pope John Paul II declared:
At this moment the lay faithful, in virtue of their participation in the prophetic mission of Christ, are fully part of this work of the Church. Their responsibility, in particular, is to testify how the Christian faith constitutes the only fully valid response-consciously perceived and stated by all in varying degrees-to the problems and hopes that life poses to every person and society. This will be possible if the lay faithful will know how to overcome in themselves the separation of the Gospel from life, to again take up in their daily activities in family, work and society, an integrated approach to life that is fully brought about by the inspiration and strength of the Gospel. Our Lady of Fatima urged the exact same daily conversion of life for the salvation of souls and the salvation of the world.
In his Encyclical Letter Fides et Ratio of September 14, 1998, Pope Saint John Paul II addressed the relationship between faith and reason. In a particular way, he addressed the grave harm done by a divorce of faith from reason, leading to the betrayal of both which have God as their one and only author. In fact, erroneous philosophical positions which are a betrayal of philosophy itself, which is the study of the truth, are at the base of a way of life which ends up in a practical apostasy by many in our time. I remember well the sage words of my Bishop, Bishop Frederick W. Freking, during my years of philosophical study in the seminary, 1968-1971, which he repeated often: “Young man, the problems in the Church today are not theological; they are philosophical.”
Pope John Paul II described the situation with these words:
With the rise of the first universities, theology came more directly into contact with other forms of learning and scientific research. Although they insisted upon the organic link between theology and philosophy, Saint Albert the Great and Saint Thomas were the first to recognize the autonomy which philosophy and the sciences needed if they were to perform well in their respective fields of research. From the late Medieval period onwards, however, the legitimate distinction between the two forms of learning became more and more a fateful separation. As a result of the exaggerated rationalism of certain thinkers, positions grew more radical and there emerged eventually a philosophy which was separate from and absolutely independent of the contents of faith. Another of the many consequences of this separation was an ever deeper mistrust with regard to reason itself. In a spirit both skeptical and agnostic, some began to voice a general mistrust, which led some to focus more on faith and others to deny its rationality altogether.
In short, what for Patristic and Medieval thought was in both theory and practice a profound unity, producing knowledge capable of reaching the highest forms of speculation, was destroyed by systems which espoused the cause of rational knowledge sundered from faith and meant to take the place of faith…
It should also be borne in mind that the role of philosophy itself has changed in modern culture. From universal wisdom and learning, it has been gradually reduced to one of the many fields of human knowing; indeed in some ways it has been consigned to a wholly marginal role. Other forms of rationality have acquired an ever higher profile, making philosophical learning appear all the more peripheral. These forms of rationality are directed not towards the contemplation of truth and the search for the ultimate goal and meaning of life; but instead, as “instrumental reason”, they are directed—actually or potentially—towards the promotion of utilitarian ends, towards enjoyment or power…
In the wake of these cultural shifts, some philosophers have abandoned the search for truth in itself and made their sole aim the attainment of a subjective certainty or a pragmatic sense of utility. This in turn has obscured the true dignity of reason, which is no longer equipped to know the truth and to seek the absolute.
In the address during his General Audience of April 14, 1999, Pope John Paul II, referring to the just- cited text of Fides et Ratio and to an ever more pervasive secularism, observed: “The contemporary era has known particularly devastating forms of ‘theoretical’ and ‘practical’ atheism.” Time does not permit me to pursue more deeply the philosophical presuppositions of a practical apostasy in our time, but I hope that these words of Pope John Paul II will give direction to your consideration of the matter.
There are many more texts of Pope Saint John Paul II which help to understand both the situation of practical apostasy in the Church and the necessary remedy of it. I note one final text, taken from his Post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation, Ecclesia in Europa, “On Jesus Christ Alive in His Church: The Source of Hope for Europe” of June 23, 2003. Referring to the radical secularization of Christian Europe and to the resulting loss of hope among Christians in Europe, he wrote:
At the root of this loss of hope is an attempt to promote a vision of man apart from God and apart from Christ. This sort of thinking has led to man being considered as “the absolute center of reality, a view which makes him occupy – falsely – the place of God and which forgets that it is not man who creates God, but rather God who creates man. Forgetfulness of God led to the abandonment of man”. It is therefore “no wonder that in this context a vast field has opened for the unrestrained development of nihilism in philosophy, of relativism in values and morality, and of pragmatism – and even a cynical hedonism – in daily life”. European culture gives the impression of “silent apostasy” on the part of people who have all that they need and who live as if God does not exist.
This is the context for those attempts, including the most recent ones, to present European culture with no reference to the contribution of the Christian religion which marked its historical development and its universal diffusion. We are witnessing the emergence of a new culture, largely influenced by the mass media, whose content and character are often in conflict with the Gospel and the dignity of the human person. This culture is also marked by a widespread and growing religious agnosticism, connected to a more profound moral and legal relativism rooted in confusion regarding the truth about man as the basis of the inalienable rights of all human beings. At times the signs of a weakening of hope are evident in disturbing forms of what might be called a “culture of death”.
What Pope Saint John Paul II writes about Christianity in Europe sadly could be said about Christianity in America and in other places in which the Christian faith has been taught and the Church has taken root.
The situation of a widespread apostasy to which Pope Saint John Paul II addressed himself with steadfastness throughout his pontificate has been addressed consistently in the Church from her first days of life. One thinks of the acts of the inherent apostasy of Ananias and Sapphira whose deception regarding the sale of property expressed a breach of communion in the Church and redounded to their death. In addressing their act, Saint Peter, shepherd of the universal Church, asked Ananias: “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back for yourself part of the proceeds of the land?” (Acts 5, 3)
One thinks also of the apostasy of Christians who lacked the courage to defend the faith from external persecutions by pagan governments and from the internal persecutions of heretics. As mentioned above, Pope Saint Pius X addressed the situation of a body of teaching and practice, called Modernism, a fruit of the separation of faith from reason by rationalists, in his yet timely Encyclical Letter Pascendi Dominici Gregis of September 8, 1907.
We think, in our time, of the practical apostasy of Catholics who support and promote programs and laws which are contrary to the moral law, or who are silent and inactive about them. We think about the ever more diffuse confusion and error in the Church about the foundations of the faith – about the Holy Eucharist and Holy Matrimony, about the truth of the Holy Scriptures – and of the moral life, about acts which are always and everywhere evil and about the just punishment of sin, including eternal damnation for the soul which remains unrepentant of grievous sin. And all of this, in many places, not only goes uncorrected by the clear announcement of the Church’s constant teaching and practice, but is condoned and even promoted by those charged by Our Lord with the care of souls.
We are not talking about theoretical questions but about a confusion and error which endangers the salvation of souls. Let us not forget the words of Our Lady of Fatima regarding the reality of Hell in the first part of the Secret with its two essential contents: the terrifying vision of Hell and the offer of God’s healing peace through the intercession of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, so that souls may be saved from a life of grievous or mortal sin and its fruit: eternal death. At a time when the world has never needed more the clear and courageous witness of the Church, she appears not to know herself, her identity in Christ Who comes to us through the unbroken Apostolic Tradition. The urgent need of a new evangelization of the world, made possible by a prior new evangelization of the Church herself has never been more urgent. The Message of Our Lady of Fatima has never been more timely.
Referring to the punishments necessarily connected with the grave sins of the time, Our Lady, during her apparition on July 13, 1917, announced the peace which God wants to give to souls and to the world. She teaches us that the peace of God will come to the world through two means: the consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and the practice of the Communion of Reparation on the First Saturday of the month. Our Lady spoke these words to the shepherd children:
To prevent this [the punishment of the world “for its crimes by means of war, famine, and persecutions of the Church and of the Holy Father], I shall come to ask for the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart and the Communion of Reparation on the First Saturdays. If my requests are heeded, Russia will be converted and there will be peace; if not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer, various nations will be annihilated.
In the end my Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me, and she will be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world. In Portugal, the dogma of the Faith will always be preserved, etc.
Our Lady indicates the spiritual remedy of the deplorable situation in which the world and the Church find themselves. She also foretold the terrible physical chastisements which would result from the failure to consecrate the agent of the spread of atheistic communism to the Sacred Heart of Jesus through her Immaculate Heart and to undertake the regular practice of reparation for so many offenses communicated against the immeasurable and unceasing love of God manifested so perfectly in the glorious pierced Heart of Jesus.
Regarding the consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I do not doubt for a moment the intention of Pope Saint John Paul II to carry out the consecration on March 25, 1984. The Servant of God Sister Maria Lucia of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart indicated that Our Lady had accepted it. But it is evident that the consecration was not carried out in the manner requested by Our Lady. Recognizing the necessity of a total conversion from atheistic materialism and communism to Christ, the call of Our Lady of Fatima to consecrate Russia to her Immaculate Heart, in accord with her explicit instruction, remains urgent.
The Communion of Reparation on the First Saturdays represents the heart of a coherent life lived in Christ, a union of hearts, one with the Immaculate Heart of Mary, with the Sacred Heart of Jesus. We have the assurance of Our Lady that her Immaculate Heart will triumph, that the truth andlove of her Divine Son will triumph. We are called to be agents of her triumph by our obedience to her maternal counsel. Let us not forget Sister Lucia’s description of the third part of the Secret, in which she quotes “the Angel with a flaming sword” whom she saw at Our Lady’s left side:
Pointing to the earth with his right hand, the Angel cried out in a loud voice:“Penance, Penance, Penance!” Sister Lucia then describes the martyrdom of those remaining true to Our Lord, of those who are of one heart, in the Immaculate Heart of Mary, with His Most Sacred Heart. Let us not fail to embrace whatever suffering comes from our faithful witness to Him Who is the true treasure of our hearts.
The reality of the apostasy of faith in our time rightly profoundly frightens us. Our love of Christ and of His Mystical Body, the Church, makes clear to us the gravity of the evil which seeks to rob us of our eternal salvation in Christ. But let us not give in to discouragement but rather remember that the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary, assumed into glory, never ceases to beat with love for us, the children whom her Divine Son gave to her, as He was dying upon the Cross (Cf. Jn 19, 26-27). With maternal care, she draws our hearts to her glorious Immaculate Heart, in order to take our hearts to His Sacred Heart, and she instructs us, as she instructed the wine stewards at the Wedding Feast of Cana in their distress: “Do whatever he tells you” (Jn 2, 5). Let us, with the help of the Virgin Mother of God, be prepared to accept whatever sacrifice is asked of us, in order to be faithful brothers and sisters of Christ, faithful soldiers of Christ, the only-begotten Son of God.
Let us take up the way of the way of prayer, penance and reparation which Our Lady of Fatima teaches us. Let us make our own the prayer taught to the saintly shepherd children by the Angel of Portugal during his first vision. He taught them to pray three times with these words:
My God, I believe, I adore, I hope [in] and I love You. I ask pardon of You for
those who do not believe, do not adore, do not hope [in] and do not love You.
What is more, the Angel, God’s messenger to the shepherd children to prepare them for the apparitions of the Mother of God, assured them:
Pray thus. The Hearts of Jesus and Mary are attentive to the voice of yoursupplications.
Let us never doubt that the Hearts of Jesus and Mary are ever open to receive our prayers and to help us in all of our needs.
For our part, let us follow the counsel of the same Angel, given to the shepherd children, during his second apparition: “Offer prayers and sacrifices to the Most High.” Let us do, as the Angel went on to instruct the children:
Make of everything you can a sacrifice, and offer it to God as an action of reparation for the sins by which He is offended, and in supplication for the conversion of sinners. You will thus draw down peace upon your country. I am its Guardian Angel, the Angel of Portugal. Above all, accept and bear with submission the suffering which the Lord will send you.
Let us, in imitation of the saintly shepherd children, accept happily suffering for the sake of the forgiveness of sins and the repair of the disorder which sin always introduces into our personal lives and into the world. Let us be realistic about the great evils which beset the world and the Church, and, at the same time, let us be full of hope in the victory of the Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, for which we battle each day with the incomparable spiritual armaments of prayer and penance, and of reparation for sins committed.
I conclude with words of Pope Saint John Paul II, on the occasion of his visit to the Shrine of Our Lady of Fatima on May 13, 1982, the first anniversary of the attempt on his life:
My heart is oppressed when I see the sin of the world and the whole range of menaces gathering like a dark cloud over mankind, but it also rejoices with hope as I once more do what has been done by my Predecessors, when they consecrated the world to the Heart of the Mother, when they consecrated especially to that Heart those peoples which particularly need to be consecrated. Doing this means consecrating the world to Him Who is infinite Holiness. This Holiness means redemption. It means a love more powerful than evil. No “sin of the world” can ever overcome this Love.
Once more this act is being done. Mary’s appeal is not for just once. Her appeal must be taken up by generation after generation, in accordance with the ever new “signs of the times”. It must be unceasingly returned to. It must ever be taken up anew.
Grateful for the great spiritual gift of the 2017 Fatima Centennial Summit, let us hear the Message of the Mother of God anew in our hearts and let us respond to it with all our heart.
Thank you for your patient attention. May God bless you and your homes. Raymond Leo Cardinal BURKE
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ROME, October 24, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) — What might be the repercussions of Pope Francis’ public letter to Cardinal Robert Sarah, the Vatican’s liturgy chief, correcting him for seeking to rein in the Pope’s new liturgical decentralization?
To gain perspective on the significance and potential impact of the Pope’s letter to the cardinal, we spoke with Dr. Peter Kwasniewski, a prolific writer and international lecturer on the liturgy, as well as a cantor, conductor, and composer of sacred music.
LifeSite: Dr. Kwasniewski, what in your view is the most significant aspect of Pope Francis’ letter to Cardinal Sarah?
Dr. Kwasniewski: The most significant aspect by far is the rather blunt setting aside of key provisions of Liturgiam Authenticam, which was the fruit of years of responding to egregious difficulties and errors on the part of many vernacular translations. The original ICEL translation of the Roman Missal and other books was a pathetic travesty of the source texts and led to the entrenchment of numerous bad mental and liturgical habits. (As a bishop once said to a member of the original ICEL team: “I see the dynamism, but where’s the equivalency?”) The process that led to the new English translation, while certainly not perfect from any number of viewpoints, at least ensured a substantial correspondence in the lex orandi or law of prayer. I still notice when attending OF Masses [Novus Ordo] how much richer and more Catholic the texts are, in spite of their remaining defects in comparison with the traditional Roman Missal. In the Pope’s letter to Cardinal Sarah, it is clear that the principles for which Wojtyla and Ratzinger fought are being retired or sidelined so that we can go back to the 1970s – “always backwards, never forwards” seems to be the motto of the liturgical progressives, who are nostalgically stuck in a certain “spirit of Vatican II” mentality and cannot advance beyond the narrow agenda characteristic of that phase.
Can you please explain for readers what principles of Liturgiam Authenticam have been changed?
Liturgiam Authenticam seems to have been an attempt to halt the balkanization and banalization of worship that had taken over in almost every language, with the exalted beauty of liturgical texts being reduced to cartoon caricatures (e.g., “he took the cup” instead of “he took this precious chalice in his holy and venerable hands”). Liturgiam Authenticam had maintained that it was absolutely necessary for the Holy See to retain ultimate governance over translations of liturgical books, and that the Vatican can and should have final review of the texts, with the authority to change the texts. Magnum Principium and this new clarification at least open the door to a reversal of that long-overdue course correction.
As the Church prays, so she believes. What long-term effects could these changes have on people’s faith?
When we see the phrase “legitimate adaptations,” we should recognize it as code language for experimental inculturation that breaks apart the substantial unity of the Roman Rite. Indeed, this has already been done by the hundreds of vernacular translations already in existence as well as the plethora of options in the new liturgical books, but in recent moves we are seeing an acceleration of regionalism and pluralism.
The episcopal conferences already have far too much power, which has taken away from the role and responsibility of individual bishops and of the Pope. It is not in keeping with the principle of subsidiarity because each bishop is supreme in his diocese, and the Pope is supreme over the whole Church; episcopal conferences are mere bureaucratic mechanisms having no inherent office, authority, or responsibility. One might compare them to the difference between individual sovereign nations and the United Nations. Already at the Second Vatican Council, when some of the Fathers expressed a desire that greater authority, independent of Rome, be vested in national episcopacies, other Fathers strongly countered, saying it would fragment the Church in her expressions of faith.
More deeply, the calling into question of Liturgiam Authenticam, n. 80 in particular is a continuation of the Pope’s novel explanation of doctrinal development, where he sets aside the perennial principle of St. Vincent of Lerins, often cited by earlier Popes, that whenever something new is said — and we could consider a liturgical translation to be a new thing being said — it should always be in eodem dogmate, eodem sensu, eademque sententia — expressing the same doctrine, the same meaning, the same judgment. This is not at all the way progressives think about dogmatic definitions, moral teachings, or liturgical texts. All of these, for them, are permanently adaptable, changeable, even contradictable, depending on the supposed “progress” of society, culture, and mentality. It is an inherently evolutionist point of view, indebted to Hegel and Darwin, where one can get a fowl from a fish. Whether or not this is true about the natural world, it has never been believed to be true of sacred doctrine.
Dr. Kwasniewski, you have written extensively on the liturgical fallout after Vatican II. What do you anticipate might be the repercussions of the Pope’s letter and its contents?
The invoking of “comprehension of the [liturgical] text by the recipients” risks reintroducing the kind of rationalism that has made a wasteland out of Catholic liturgy. The liturgy, as a divine mystery and the work of God in our midst, cannot be comprehended by any man or even any angel. There are various ways into the liturgy, through the five senses and the intellect, and of course it should offer the faithful “handles” they can grasp in order to follow the unfolding rites. But a liturgy that aims to be simply and immediately understood is doomed to impoverishment, superficiality, and boredom. There is nothing to fascinate, bewilder, challenge, delight, or reward the participant. In the liturgy we aspire to put on the mind of Christ, which is the work of a lifetime. We have to go through darkness and light, ideas and feelings, silence, emptiness, self-discipline, suffering, buoyed up by the rich resources of our 2,000-year old tradition. The reduction of liturgy to a commonplace, horizontal, tidy, and effortless “understanding” is the great error and scourge of the past 50 years.
On the other hand, some claim — and I do not know how strong their claim is — that the new process put into place by Pope Francis will make it more difficult to secure a new translation, because it will require the unanimous consent of an entire bishops’ conference, rather than being in the hands of a steering committee working in tandem with the Congregation for Divine Worship to secure the latter’s approval. If this is true, it will make local change more difficult, which is probably a good thing at this point. Frankly, I cannot imagine the US bishops in general wanting to do another translation, or a substantial modification of the current translation, so soon after this was promulgated as the end result of an absurdly long process. I don’t imagine we’ll see changes right away. The real matter for concern, it seems to me, is how this is one more element in a larger campaign to undo the reformatory work of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, which was, in many ways, too little and too late, but is nonetheless the object of bitter hatred on the part of those who could never stomach the “conservatism” or even “traditionalism” of Wojtyla and Ratzinger.
Is there anything else you would like to add?
It occurs to me that there something important that needs saying. As you know, Cardinal Marx said that Magnum Principium frees up episcopal conferences and makes Liturgiam Authenticam a dead letter. (see here) Cardinal Sarah publicly disagreed with Marx on this point — and now Pope Francis is transmitting the signal that he is taking the side of Marx rather than Sarah, just as he has endorsed Cardinal Kasper’s position on communion for the divorced and remarried. In this way, the Pope is making it clearer all the time that he essentially stands with the German hierarchy, known to be one of the most liberal in the world, on the hot-button questions of the day.
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The Showstopper For a Jesuit Pope: To Beatify Pascal, the Archenemy
In the preface to a book that presents eight of his interviews, just out in bookstores, Francis has lifted the veil on a couple of rather interestig things.
At a certain point the pope writes:
“Sometimes in my interviewers I have noted – even in those who say they are very far from the faith – great intelligence and erudition. And even, in some cases, the capacity to let themselves be touched by the ‘touch’ of Pascal. This moves me, and I treasure it greatly.”
The first is in reality more a confirmation than a revelation. It is his affectionate esteem for Eugenio Scalfari, founder of the newspaper “la Repubblica.” He is, in fact, the interviewer “very far from the faith” to whom Francis is referring.
The two meet once or twice a year, at Santa Marta, and it is almost always the pope who invites his friend. The conversation takes place without Scalfari recording any of it. And in the following days he publishes an account, adhering to the following criteria as he explained once to the Foreign Press of Rome, reporting these words that he said to the pope at the end of the first conversation:
“I will reconstruct the account of the dialogue in such a way that it can be understood by all. Some things you have said to me I will not report. And some of the things I will attribute to you, you did not say them, but I will put them there so that the reader may understand who you are.”
The effect of this liberty of transcription is that Scalfari has confidently attributed to Francis not a few “revolutions,” the latest of which is the abolition of hell, purgatory, and heaven. Without the pope ever having felt it his duty to correct or deny anything.
The second thing on which Francis has lifted the veil concerns the 17th-century French mathematician, philosopher, and man of faith Blaise Pascal. The pope writes that he appreciates how Scalfari has let himself “be touched by the ‘touch’ of Pascal.”
In effect, during their last conversation, this past summer, Scalfari had asked the pope to beatify Pascal, in addition to lifting the excommunication from the other great philosopher of the 17th century, Baruch Spinoza, passionately arguing for both of these requests.
But while Francis let the Spinoza idea drop, on Pascal he said he agreed, in these words as reported by Scalfari:
“You, dear friend, are perfectly right in this case: I too think that he deserves beatification. I intend to find out what needs to be done and ask for the opinion of members of the Vatican offices dedicated to such questions, together with my personal and positive conviction.”
Whether these words will be followed by deeds remains to be seen. But it would make quite a splash if the one to beatify Pascal – who wrote against the Jesuits that masterpiece which is “Les Provinciales” – should be none other than the first Jesuit pope in history.
“Les Provinciales,” in fact, are letters that Pascal wrote to a friend to tell him about the conversations he had with Jesuit fathers, whose casuistry and laxity in moral theology he brought under withering fire.
The following is a passage taken from the sixth letter, dated April 10, 1656.
It is from centuries ago, but still topical.
*
“PERSONS DO NOT SIN NOW, THOUGH THEY WOULD HAVE SINNED FORMERLY”
by Blaise Pascal
“Reverend father,” said I, “how happy the world is in having such men as you for its masters! I never knew the reason why you took such pains to establish that a single doctor, if a grave one, might render an opinion probable, and that the contrary might be so too, and that one may choose any side one pleases, even though he does not believe it to be the right side, and all with such a safe conscience, that the confessor who should refuse him absolution on the faith of the casuists would be in a state of damnation. But I see now that a single casuist may make new rules of morality at his discretion and dispose, according to his fancy, of everything pertaining to the regulation of manners.”
“What you have now said,” rejoined the father, “would require to be modified a little. Pay attention now, while I explain our method, and you will observe the progress of a new opinion, from its birth to its maturity. First, the grave doctor who invented it exhibits it to the world, casting it abroad like seed, that it may take root. In this state it is very feeble; it requires time gradually to ripen. This accounts for Diana, who has introduced a great many of these opinions, saying: ‘I advance this opinion; but as it is new, I give it time to come to maturity — relinquo tempori maturandum.’ Thus in a few years it becomes insensibly consolidated; and, after a considerable time, it is sanctioned by the tacit approbation of the Church, according to the grand maxim of Father Bauny, ‘that if an opinion has been advanced by some casuist, and has not been impugned by the Church, it is a sign that she approves of it.’”
“Indeed, father!” cried I, “why, on this principle the Church would approve of all the abuses which she tolerates, and all the errors in all the books which she does not censure!”
“Dispute the point with Father Bauny,” he replied. “I am merely quoting his words, and you begin to quarrel with me. There is no disputing with facts, sir. Well, as I was saying, when time has thus matured an opinion, it thenceforth becomes completely probable and safe. Hence the learned Caramuel, in dedicating his Fundamental Theology to Diana, declares that this great Diana has rendered many opinions probable which were not so before — quae antea non erant, and that, therefore, in following them, persons do not sin now, though they would have sinned formerly — jam non peccant, licet ante peccaverint.”
“Truly, father,” I observed, “it must be worth one’s while living in the neighbourhood of your doctors. Why, of two individuals who do the same actions, he that knows nothing about their doctrine sins, while he that knows it does no sin. It seems, then, that their doctrine possesses at once an edifying and a justifying virtue! The law of God, according to St. Paul, made transgressors; but this law of yours makes nearly all of us innocent. I beseech you, my dear sir, let me know all about it. I will not leave you till you have told me all the maxims which your casuists have established.”
“Alas!” the monk exclaimed, “our main object, no doubt, should have been to establish no other maxims than those of the Gospel in all their strictness: and it is easy to see, from the Rules for the regulation of our manners, that, if we tolerate some degree of relaxation in others, it is rather out of complaisance than through design. The truth is, sir, we are forced to it. Men have arrived at such a pitch of corruption nowadays that, unable to make them come to us, we must e’en go to them, otherwise they would cast us off altogether; and, what is worse, they would become perfect castaways. It is to retain such characters as these that our casuists have taken under consideration the vices to which people of various conditions are most addicted, with the view of laying down maxims which, while they cannot be said to violate the truth, are so gentle that he must be a very impracticable subject indeed who is not pleased with them. The grand project of our Society, for the good of religion, is never to repulse any one, let him be what he may, and so avoid driving people to despair. They have got maxims, therefore, for all sorts of persons; for beneficiaries, for priests, for monks; for gentlemen, for servants; for rich men, for commercial men; for people in embarrassed or indigent circumstances; for devout women, and women that are not devout; for married people, and irregular people. In short, nothing has escaped their foresight.”
In the latest instance, while reviewing Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia’s new book, Scalfari quotes the pope as saying that among the bishops of the Catholic Church there is a lot of relativism. Scalfari then quotes Francis as saying*:
We believers and of course above all we priests and we bishops believe in the Absolute, but each in their own way because each one has his own head and thought. So our absolute truth, shared by us all, is different from person to person. We do not avoid discussions in the case where our different thoughts confront each other. So there is a kind of relativism among us as well. [emphasis added]
Scalfari then adds his own thoughts about the pope’s and Archbishop Paglia’s own distinct idea that hell is empty:
Pope Francis, preceded in this [view] by John XXIII and Paul VI, but, with a more revolutionary force with respect to ecclesial theology, has abolished the places where, after death, souls must go: Hell, Purgatory, Paradise. Two thousand years of theology have been based on this kind of afterlife, which even the Gospels confirm. However, it is with some attention to the theme of Grace — that is in part due to the letters of Saint Paul (to the Corinthians and the Romans) and partly even more so to Augustine of Hippo. All souls are endowed with Grace, and so they are born perfectly innocent and they remain so unless they take the path of evil. If they are aware of it and do not repent even at the moment of death, they are condemned. Pope Francis, I repeat, has abolished the places of eternal dwelling in the afterlife of souls. The thesis held by him is that the souls dominated by evil and not repentant cease to exist{now there is a happy thought} while those who are redeemed from evil will be assumed into beatitude, contemplating God. This is the thesis of Francis and also of Paglia. [emphasis added]
As Vatican expert Sandro Magister has reported before, Scalfari previously quoted Pope Francis as saying: “In a millennium or so our human species will be extinguished and souls will merge with God.”
And in 2015, Pope Francis was again quoted by Scalfari: “What happens to that lost soul? Will it be punished? And how? The response of Francis is distinct and clear: there is no punishment, but the annihilation of that soul.”
These quite heretical statements that are attributed to Pope Francis himself — and which he still has not publicly denied — are now also attributed to the new head of the Pontifical Academy for Life and Grand Chancellor of the re-organized John Paul II Institute on Marriage and Family Sciences. His new book, therefore, should be carefully studied and analyzed.
In context — under the premise that there is no eternal punishment for sin anymore — this new Bergoglian era now makes much more sense. If Hell is not to be feared, what impediment is there to keep us from moving in the direction of moral relativism and doctrinal laxity?
It thus becomes more urgent for faithful Catholics who are determined to remain loyal to the traditional teaching of the Catholic Church to continue, in their own organizations and publications, to resist such violations of God’s truth which are already producing grave effects on the moral behavior of Catholics with regard to contraception, abortion, and adultery. Professor Josef Seifert has laid his finger into the wound of Pope Francis’ teaching, namely: that there seems to be no intrinsically evil act any more. {Which is probably why Francis never quotes Saint John Paul II since the Saint asserts the existence of intrinsic evil with great force in VERITATIS SPLENDOR.}
*Translation by Andrew Guernsey
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on GOOD NEWS FOR SERIOUS SINNERS !!! IT APPEARS THAT FRANCIS AND PAGLIA DO NOT BELIEVE THAT HELL EXISTS AND SO MAYBE SATAN DOES NOT EXIST EITHER
Milo Yiannopoulis talks about his Catholic faith, masculinity, Fr. James Martin
Milo Yiannopoulos is best known as a conservative provocateur, famous for making statements like “Feminism is cancer,” “Birth control makes women unattractive and crazy,” and “Islam is cancer,” among others. His talks are routinely interrupted by leftist protestors, most notably at Berkeley in February, which ended up cancelling Yiannopoulos’ talk after Antifa members smashed windows, overturned barricades, set fire to property and attacked police. Although Church Militant does not endorse everything Yiannopoulis says and does, we are on the same page with regard to the unchanging teachings of the Church and opposing Catholics who would try to change Christ’s teachings to make them more comfortable. Church Militant reproduces here what Americamagazine refuses to publish.
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By Milo Yiannopoulos
Over five weeks ago, I sent the following answers to questions I was asked by America magazine, a journal run by Jesuits. They have chosen not to publish it, perhaps out of compassion, fearing too many of their aging readers would suffer heart failure. Or perhaps they couldn’t stand my tweaking of their most famous contributor, Fr. James Martin, notorious for equivocating over any Church teaching that might cause a stir at an Anglican garden party.
Amusingly, while the Jesuits struggled to decide if they could bear to publish my answers, one of the Church’s highest ranking Cardinals called out Fr. Martin by name as “one of the most outspoken critics of the church’s message with regard to sexuality.” That means my side in this dispute enjoys support from a black prince of the Church raised on a continent where martyrdom is common, while the other side’s champion is a white bourgeois man in whose life the worst threat is that the wine is a bit off this week.
Ask yourself: Which of these men would you want to have your six?
Although you grew up Catholic, you now say and do many shocking things in your public career which seem to be at odds with your childhood faith. In what sense do you still consider yourself a Catholic?
Plenty of saints were shocking, to say nothing of our Lord, who got in a spot of trouble for His shocking claims, as you might recall. I am certainly no saint, but I don’t think “shocking” is a helpful way of approaching the question of Catholics in public life. It doesn’t settle much to say that the current Pope is shocking to many Catholics, including me. Or to note that I’m shocked by supposedly Catholic politicians who make laws in flat contradiction to the natural law, which you need no faith to grasp.
In my case, do you mean it’s shocking that a Catholic like me is loudly worried about Islam, which has waged war on Holy Mother Church for more than a millennium?
Or that I say Planned Parenthood’s abortion crusade amounts to black genocide?
Or that I’ve supported Pope Paul VI’s criticism of artificial contraception so strongly that Hillary Clinton attacked me for it in her presidential campaign?
Frankly, what’s really shocking is that a poor sinner like me has spoken out more on contraception than 99% of our bishops, who seem too preoccupied with diversity and climate change to talk about God.
Maybe you mean it’s shocking that I’m always joking about my lack of chastity and my fondness for black dudes, but I still call myself Catholic. And I don’t see what’s so shocking about that, either. One of the most famous saints of all time, sixteen centuries ago, prayed, “Lord, make me chaste, but not yet.”
St. Augustine
Anyone who grows up in Catholic cities like New Orleans and Rome emerges pretty unshockable — and certainly wouldn’t be alarmed by me.
I think it was a visit to New Orleans that inspired Evelyn Waugh to make an observation I often quote: Protestants seem to think, I’m good, therefore I go to church, whereas Catholics think, I’m very bad, therefore I go to church. Waugh also said, when people asked how he could call himself a Catholic: You have no idea how bad I’d be if I weren’t.
Sins of the flesh, let us remember, are at the bottom of the scale. The Church says self-righteousness is at the top. Therefore, I’m in a lot better shape than some of my feminist and establishment Republican enemies. To say nothing of Islam!
In life, I believe in aspiration. If you’re a poor kid, aspire to rise economically. If you’re shy, aspire to confidence, so you can defend your views in public. And if you’re a wretched sinner like me, aspire to end up better than you are now. Miracles do happen!
Where do you experience tensions with Catholicism in your life?
Who says any Catholic should lack tension stoked by his weaknesses? We Catholics are better at clothes, food, and parties. Why shouldn’t we be better at guilt, too?
You don’t see me disputing the Church’s teachings on homosexuality. There’s no intellectual tension, because I wouldn’t dream of demanding that the Church throw away her hard truths just to lie to me in hopes I’ll feel better about myself. I love the truth, not lies, and I know no one’s feelings are the basis of truth.
That’s why I don’t understand those Catholics — such as, if you’ll forgive my horrid impertinence, this magazine’s editor at large, Fr. Martin — who imply that if people don’t like what the Church says, maybe the Church is wrong or should apologize. The Church was founded on a rock and a cross, not on a hug.
Still, if you insist I talk about feelings, I’ve said before that I feel there’s something wrong with the fact that my lovemaking can’t produce the mini-Milo’s I’d like to have. How’s that for a subjective confirmation of the Church teaching that same-sex attraction is “objectively disordered” because it can’t lead to procreation?
Bottom line: The Church says I’m not culpable for my temptations, but I shouldn’t sin. She’s right. And her founder said He came to heal those who knew they were sick, so I don’t despair.
What was the best thing about your Catholic upbringing?
One good thing was hearing Mary praised for her motherhood. Whatever my own mother’s shortcomings, I learned that motherhood is the greatest vocation, and one that God banned all men from. That’s why I think it’s sad that today’s feminists, as Chesterton observed, despise motherhood and all the other chief feminine characteristics. The idea that men and women shouldn’t be different — shouldn’t have different interests, strengths, and ways of relating to Creation — is insane, and it’s empirical fact that trying to deny these differences makes all of us less happy.
I think it’s sad that today’s feminists, as Chesterton observed, despise motherhood and all the other chief feminine characteristics.Tweet
Growing up Catholic also taught me the value of humility, even if that’s not exactly a forte of mine. This virtue is important for society, because it teaches us to be tolerant of a diversity of opinions, rather than arrogantly trying to silence people we disagree with. And it’s important for me personally, because despite my vanity, I know I’m not as smart as Thomas Aquinas or as good as St. Francis.
There’s a great line from the novelist Flannery O’Connor, who liked to shock and troll a bit herself: “I’m not limited to what I personally feel or think; I’m a Catholic.” She meant the same thing Chesterton did in his famous quip, “Tradition is the democracy of the dead.” Political correctness gives us thin gruel and loneliness. The Church gives us a grand party with red meat and red wine.
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How do you pray?
On my knees.
Who are your role models, either living or dead, in the Catholic faith?
Pope Benedict XVI is still the wisest and most erudite man in Europe, though I’m sure he doesn’t deserve to have me hung around his neck as an admirer. He was also brave enough to declare publicly that Islam’s irrationalism is one of the world’s great problems.
By the way, in the same Regensburg lecture he pointed out that secularists in the West are also dangerously unbalanced, because they’re as hostile to religion as Muslims are to rationality. I note that he credits my wild pagan ancestors in Greece for the West’s deepest rational roots.
My personal motto, “laughter and war,” comes from a passage in Chesterton’s Heretics. He should be the patron saint of Catholic journalists. And of course Hilaire Belloc was brilliant as a defender of the West. In the 1930s, when the Caliphate had collapsed and no one imagined Islam would ever come back, he prophesied that the West would again be threatened, because our superior money and technology can’t take the place of a devotion to your civilization.
I’ve already quoted St. Augustine, who had his own pelvic issues. I once tweeted out an illustrated page from his Confessions that began, “I will now recall my past foulnesses.” That’ll work for my memoirs someday, too.
Rabelais and the anonymous trolls who wrote the Carmina Burana are kindred spirits.
She wasn’t a Roman, but the conservative essayist Florence King earned a title I aspire to. A New York Times book reviewer said of her: “The mind of a Jesuit with the mouth of a truck driver.”
What’s your favorite Scripture passage and why?
I’m tempted to go for the easy Waugh line from Ecclesiastes: “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.”
You recently self-published the new book Dangerous after Breitbart fired you and your original publisher withdrew the contract. How do you respond to critics who say you are “hateful” and “hurtful” to others?
The truth often hurts, as the Church has always understood. That’s one reason she so often shows us a Man in agony on a cross. I don’t delight in others’ pain, but I’m not scared into silence by the fear someone somewhere will take offense.
The fact that so many of us think hurting people’s feelings is the greatest evil says all you need to know about the decline of our civilization. If I’m wrong about something, don’t whine; show me evidence and make rational arguments.
Or tell a good joke! A big part of what I do is playing the jester, telling the powerful the truths they don’t want to hear. Maybe that’s what you meant about my “shocking” aspect. A friend who’s a brilliant medievalist at the University of Chicago (and who was just received into the Church this Easter, Deo gratias), likes to embarrass me by writing about me as a holy fool.
The fact that so many of us think hurting people’s feelings is the greatest evil says all you need to know about the decline of our civilization.Tweet
I say embarrass, but of course it’s a great compliment and I am happy to receive any kind of attention.
By the way, I wasn’t fired.
In the book you mention that you made a mistake in the broadcast that got you fired. Looking back at your public career to date, what would you do differently if you could do it all over again?
I would change nothing.
In 2011 and 2012, you were featured in Wired UK’s yearly top 100 most influential people in Britain’s digital economy, and the Observer once called you “the pit bull of tech media.” How is tech media changing the way we do journalism today?
I blame tech bloggers for the proliferation of “process journalism,” which means writing whatever appears to be true at that moment and fixing it later. Of course, they never bother. Tech journalism today has lower professional standards than a Detroit bordello, which is why I left to become famous for a living instead.
You were one of the first tech journalists to cover the Gamergate controversy, criticizing what you saw as the politicization of video game culture by “an army of sociopathic feminist programmers and campaigners, abetted by achingly politically correct American tech bloggers.” How do you respond to critics who say you are supporting the tendency of video games to demean women?
Just as there was no evidence in the 1990s that rock music, heavy metal and video games caused violence, there is no evidence today behind the moral panic that video games make you sexist. It’s politics masquerading as well-meaning academic enquiry. Fortunately, we won, and the noxious feminists are on the defensive in gaming.
What does masculinity mean to you?
It means a willingness to expose yourself to enemy fire, whether or not you wear a uniform, in order to defend the good — your family, your church, your country, your civilization. Now the men in uniform are much better men than I, but even I can do a bit to defend those things with the gifts God gave me.
Our Lord, as always, showed the way: He endured the horrors of the Passion to defend and redeem the whole world. I’m with Rod Dreher: Anybody who only preaches a namby-pamby God, and not the highly masculine God of Scripture, is leaving young men vulnerable to the monstrous false gods of race and ideology.
Boys struggling to become men are always potential barbarians, because they hunger for masculinity but aren’t sure where to find it or how to productively express it. Our Lord revealed it to them, but too many in the Church keep masculinity hidden or the subject of shame.
As a gay Catholic, you’ve debated same-sex civil unions on television news programs, surprising some people with your perspectives. In a nutshell, what do you believe about this issue and why?
First, I’m with St. Thomas Aquinas: The civil laws can’t forbid everything the Church forbids, because utopianism does more harm than good, given how weak most of us are.
I was for a long time contemptuous of gay marriage. But then I fell in love, and now I don’t know what to think.
I’d add that just as the Church doesn’t insist civil society require everyone to follow all her views of proper conduct, so civil society should follow the First Amendment and not bully believers into espousing whatever views politicians have enacted. It disgusts me when gay activists harass in the public square, much less in the courts, those simple believers who aren’t harming anyone while they bake pizzas and the like.
In 2008, the BBC featured you in media coverage of Pope Benedict XVI’s historic visit to the United Kingdom. From your perspective, what was most significant about his visit?
One major thing he did was to visit John Henry Newman’s Oratory and move him a step forward toward canonization. That’s great, given that Newman’s nemesis was liberalism in religion. He was not, as George Weigel has joked, a believer in an ice-your-own-cupcake world.
The Vatican has launched a commission to examine and overhaul the Holy See’s media communications strategy. If you could give any advice to Pope Francis about how to do journalism today, what would it be?
A bit of unintentional black humor made its way into the news some days ago, in an account of people panicking at rush hour on a commuter train in southwest London outside Wimbledon Station. Rail power lines were cut, disrupting train traffic for nearly twelve hours. The cause? Some sort of evangelist had stood up in one of the carriages and began to read aloud from the Bible.
In our neuralgic society, nervous about terrorism, we might empathize with the passengers, especially if the preacher was shouting. In New York our urban protocol is simply to avoid eye contact with people like that. But the first offense was the police description of passengers “self-evacuating.” As neologisms go, this conjured up some pretty frightful images; one expects better from the land that gave us our glorious English language. The bigger problem is that the unhappy passengers “self-evacuated” because the evangelist intoned “Death is not the end.”
In a more tranquil moment of human history, these words would be a consolation. In paraphrase they were the comforting motto of Mary Queen of Scots. T.S. Eliot used the words in his Four Quartets, and the crooner Bob Dylan made it the title of one of his most popular songs, but it caused none of his fans to self-evacuate.
The utter non-finality of death, the promise of life everlasting, is Good News for those who will listen. But for those who translate the meaning of life according to their limited narcissistic vocabulary, the good news of eternal glory is no more vital than ramblings in the Qur’an or Upanishads.
Saint Thomas More said that to be a real Christian is always to be surprised by the Resurrection. The essence of human response to the Resurrection is astonishment: it was not expected. That should be the psychology and flushed complexion of every encounter with Christ. It explains why the first words of the Risen Lord were not formulas for physics or cures for cancer, but “Peace. Don’t be afraid.” Awe, as holy fear, casts out the ignorance of servile fear. In the same vein, Saint John Vianney said that if we really understood what happens in the Mass, we would die, not out of fear but out of love. So one hyperventilating woman who jumped onto the tracks outside Wimbledon, was not altogether wrong when she said that the Bible the man was carrying was a bomb.
Perhaps it is because people do not love enough, that they panic when someone says that death is not the end. Our Lord said something more radiantly harsh than that: “And fear not them that kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul; rather fear him that can destroy both soul and body in hell.” Some who first heard that adored him, but a great many self-evacuated.
Altar with chalice and Missal in the Basilica of St Nicholas in Rome (t0m15/us.fotolia.com)
ABYSSUS ABYSSUM INVOCAT / DEEP CALLS TO DEEP 
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