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Chapter 6 The Post-Conciliar Church, Paul VI 58. Sanctity of the Church. An apologetical principle. That the Church is holy is a dogma of the Faith, included in the creed, but the theological definition of that holiness is a difficult business. We are not here concerned with canonized holiness, which has indeed varied in style with the centuries: the holiness of the Emperor St. Henry II is markedly different to that of St. John Bosco, as is that of St. Joan of Arc from that of St. Therese of Lisieux. There is furthermore a gap between the heroic virtue of the canonized saint, and the holiness inherent in anybody who is merely in a state of grace. In the Summa Theologica, III,q.8,a.3 ad secundum, and in the Catechism of the Council of Trent, in the section on the creed, it is explained how the sins of the baptized do not prejudice the holiness of the Church, but this remains nonetheless a complex notion which only a rigorous distinction can render clear. A definite distinction must be drawn between the natural element, and the supernatural element which produces the new creature; between the subjective and the objective element; between the historical element and the suprahistorical element which operates within it. Firstly, the Church is objectively holy because it is the body which has the God-Man as its head. In union with that head it becomes itself theandric: no profane body can be conceived as living in union with a holy head. Secondly, it is objectively holy because it possesses the Eucharist which is in its very essence the Sacred and the Sanctifier: all the sacraments derive from the Eucharist. Thirdly, it is holy because it possesses revealed truth in an indefectible and infallible way. The fundamental principle of Catholic apologetics must be located here: the Church cannot display, throughout its history, an uninterrupted sequence of activity in perfect conformity with the requirements of the Gospel, but it can point to an uninterrupted teaching of the truth: the holiness of the Church is to be located in the latter, not the former. It follows from this that those who belong to the Church will find themselves preaching a doctrine which is better than their own deeds. No man can preach himself, beset by weakness and failure; he can only repreach the doctrine taught by the God-Man, or better, preach the person of the God-Man Himself. Thus truth too is a constituent element in the holiness of the Church, and is forever attached to the Word and for ever at odds with corruption, including one’s own. The holiness of the Church is revealed in what could be called a subjective way in the holiness of its members, that is, in all those who live in grace as vital members of the mystical body. It appears in an outstanding and obvious way in its canonized members, whom grace and their own activity have pushed onward to the highest levels of virtue. This holiness did not fail, be it noted once again, even in the periods of the greatest corruption in Christian society and among the clergy; an age when the papacy was depraved by pagan influences saw the flourishing of Catherine of Bologna (†1464), Bernardino of Feltre (†1494), Catherine dei Fieschi (†1510), Francis of Paola (†1507), Jeanne de Valois (†1503) as well as many reformers such as Girolamo Savonarola (†l498). Considerations and facts of this sort, however, do not clear the field of all objections. Paul VI conceded to the Church’s critics the fact that “the history of the Church has many long pages that are not at all edifying”1 but he did not distinguish clearly enough between the objective holiness of the Church and the subjective holiness of its members. In another address he put it in these terms: “The Church ought to be holy and good, it ought to be as Christ intended and designed it to be, and sometimes we see that it is not worthy of the title.”2 It would seem that the Pope is turning an objective note of the Church into a subjective one. It is indeed true that Christians ought to be holy, and they are inasmuch as they live in a state of grace, but the Church is holy. It is not Christians who make the Church holy, but the Church that makes them holy. It is also true that the biblical affirmation of the irreproachable holiness of the Church non habentem maculam aut rugam2 is applicable to the Church in time only in an initial and partial way, despite the fact that it is indeed holy. All the Fathers take that absolute flawlessness as connected with the final eschatological purification rather than with the Church’s pilgrim state in time. 1.
O.R.,6 June l972. 59. The catholicity of the Church. Objection. The Church as a principle of division. Paul VI. Another aspect of the denigration of the Church should not, it seems to me, be passed over in silence, given that it was referred to by Paul VI on 24 December 1965. “The Church, with its demanding and precise attitude to dogma, impedes free conversation and harmony among men; it is a principle of division in the world rather than of union. How are division, disagreement and dispute compatible with its catholicity and its sanctity?” The Pope replies to this difficulty by saying that Catholicism is a principle of distinction among men, but not of division. The distinction is, he says, “of the same sort as that involved in the case of language, culture, art or profession.” Then, correcting himself: “It is true that Christianity can be a cause of separation and contrast, deriving from the good it bestows upon humanity: the light shines in the darkness and thus diversifies the zones of human space. But it is not of its nature to struggle against men, if it struggles at all, it is for them.” This seems a feeble and risky kind of apologetic. To equate differences between religions to differences of language, culture and even occupation, is to lower religion, the highest good, to the level of goods which, even if superior in their kind, still belong to a lower order. There is no true or absolute language, art or occupation; there is a true and absolute religion. In any case, even interpreting the division as a mere distinction, the Pope does not succeed in removing the difficulty he had proposed, and with which he was logically confronted. The drawing of any distinction can reduce but not eliminate the contradictory element found in distinct things, which will always prevent a perfect commonality between them, since it always includes something which separates one of them from the other. Hence the Pope moves away from the order of faith, with its demanding and precise attitude to dogma, to the order of charity, or rather of liberty, and talks of “respect for whatever there is of truth and of worth in every religion and in every human opinion, with the intention specially of promoting civil harmony, and collaboration in every sort of good activity.” I will not enter into the question of religious liberty. It is enough to note that in this section of the Popes message the principle of unity among men is no longer religion but liberty, and that therefore the objection which the Pope intended to tackle remains unresolved, namely that Catholicism is a principle of division. What is needed to produce union is a principle that is truly unifying, and which goes beyond religious divisions, and this principle according to Paul VI is liberty. Perhaps the solution to the contrast between the universality of Catholicism and its determinate character, by which it causes oppositions and divisions, is to be sought at a supernatural and theological level rather than at the level of some principle of natural philosophy, such as liberty and philanthropy. It should not be forgotten that in holy writ itself Christ is proclaimed as a sign of contradiction4 and that the life of individual Christians and of the Church is described as a warfare. We must therefore have recourse to that higher principle governing God’s relations with creation, namely predestination, which is from beginning to end a mystery bound up with division, separation and election.5 This kind of contrapositioning, which never exceeds the bounds of justice, is not at odds either with the goal of the universe or with the glory of God, provided that one does not assume that the divine design has failed of its end simply because some men have failed to realize their own potential destiny. To believe the former sort of failure has occurred merely because the latter has, is possible only if one confuses the goal of the universe with the goal of each man in particular; only if one says, with Gaudium et Spes 24, that man is a creature which God willed for its own sake rather than for His own sake, in short, only if one indulges the anthropocentric tendencies of the modern mentality and, to put it in theological terms, if one abandons the distinction between antecedent predestination, which concerns humanity in solidum6 and consequent predestination which concerns men divisim.7 4.
Luke, 2:34. 60. The unity of the post-conciliar Church. We are treating of the notes of the Church in the post-conciliar period by grouping together the phenomena of growth under the idea of dependence, which seems to us a characteristic principle of Catholicism, and the phenomena of decline under the opposing idea of independence. For it is the spirit of independence which has generated the radicalness of the changes, and the radicalness coincides in turn with that demand to create a new world which has led to a discontinuity with the past and a denigration of the historical Church. We must now examine what effect the spirit of independence has had on the unity of the Church. In the dramatic speech of 30 August 1973, already cited, Paul VI bewails “the division, the dispersal which is now unfortunately encountered in certain circles in the Church” and says indeed that “the recomposition of spiritual and practical unity within the Church is today one of the Church’s most grave and urgent problems.” The schismatic situation is all the more grave in that those who have in substance separated themselves claim not to be separate, and those whose responsibility it is to declare that the separated are in fact separate, wait instead for the schismatics to admit that that is what they are. “They would like” says the Pope “to have their own official membership of the Church legalized, allegedly in the name of tolerance, thus removing any possibility of being in a state of schism or of self-excommunication.” In his speech of 20 November 1976, the Pope returned to the situation “of those sons of the Church who, without declaring an official canonical break with the Church on their part, are nonetheless in an abnormal relation with her.” These assertions seem to give a subjective character to a matter of fact which the Church is competent to ascertain, since the feeling of being united to the Church is not enough to create and sustain real unity. The Church is endowed with an organ which knows when unity has been broken and which has the objective function of declaring the fact, when necessary, and which cannot properly limit itself to confirming the admissions of those who are in substance already cut off from the Church. When expressing his “great sorrow at the phenomenon which is spreading like an epidemic in the cultural sphere of our ecclesial community,” the Pope was using a turn of phrase designed to mask and reduce a phenomenon which in fact affected the hierarchical sphere, since the formation of isolated and autonomous groups was agreed to by episcopal conferences. The Pope went on to say that disunity in the Church was the result of pluralism: this ought to be limited to the manner in which the faith is formulated, but has come to trespass on the substance of the faith itself; it ought to be confined within theological circles, but has come to cause dissent among the bishops. In the same speech the Pope pointed out very clearly that a disunited Church cannot possibly bring about union among all Christians, or indeed among all men. In his speech of 29 November 1973, talking of people who claim to make Church (as they put it) simply by claiming to be the Church, Paul VI made the following lenient judgment on the schismatic situation: “Some defend this ambiguous position with reasons which are plausible in themselvesy that is with the intention of correcting certain regrettable and debatable human aspects of the Church, or to advance its culture and spirituality, or to put the Church in step with the changing times, and they thus disrupt the communion to which they wish to remain joined.” The peculiar part of this address is the description of the intention of improving the Church as a plausible reason, as if intentions could right a false line of thought, like that of those who claim to be in the Church independently of the Church, as if any departure from ecclesial unity had to be deliberate and formalized by the deserters in order for there to be a true schism in the Church. Is it not quite a common attitude historically, in clashes of this sort, that those who separate themselves claim not to be separate, and even say they are more united to the Church than the Church is itself? Do not all schismatics claim to belong to the true Church, from which the Catholic Church has in some way separated itself? 61. The Church disunited in the hierarchy. The rock-like unity of the Church, whether loved or loathed, has been replaced in the post-conciliar Church by a disunity which is in turn equally loved or loathed. We will discuss disunity in matters of faith later on. At this point we simply state the facts concerning disunity in the hierarchy. Mgr Gijsen, the Bishop of Roermond, has said in reference to the pluralism of the Dutch church that a meeting of minds is impossible within the Church if it means a meeting between those who want to belong to one Church and those who want to belong to another. It would then, he says, be a meeting between churches rather than within the Church. Replying to someone who had asked him whether the differences among the Dutch bishops were so great as to justify talking of different churches, he said “certainly” and explained that his colleagues in the Dutch episcopate claim the Roman Church stands on the same level as the Dutch, thus denying the Catholic dogma of the primacy of Peter and his successors.8The bishops diagnosis exactly corresponds with that of Protestant communities: “The reality is that we are no longer confronted with one Catholicism, but with different types of Catholicism.”9 The importance of these different testimonies to the internal discord within Catholicism becomes all the more obvious when one remembers that the peaceful harmony of the Roman Church has always been contrasted, whether for praise or blame, with the varieties of Protestantism. Up until the council, the fragmentation which the principle of private judgment had generated in Protestantism was a commonplace of Catholic apologetics. Episcopal pluralism certainly becomes apparent when there are contradictory statements on the same points. In 1974, for example, the demands of the synod of Wiirzburg regarding the admission of bigamous divorcees to the sacraments, and the participation of heterodox people in the Eucharist were rejected by the German bishops, but identical proposals were made and accepted by the synod and bishops of Switzerland. Even within the bosom of the same episcopal conference individual members take dissenting and independent stands. This is an effect of the collegial system, which works by majorities and deprives each of the bishops of the minority of his own authority while not specifying what degree of acquiescence is due to the confer-ences decisions, or whence any supposed duty of acquiescence is derived. Thus the individual bishop is stripped of his own authority on the one hand, while on the other he is licensed to judge not only his own conference, but all other bishops and conferences as well.10 In 1974 Mgr Riobe, the Bishop of Orleans, openly defended the catechist chaplains of France whom the episcopal conference and Cardinal Marty had expressly censured.11 When Cardinal Dopfner, the Archbishop of Munich, had allowed the basilica of St. Boniface in Munich to be used for the performance of Ave Eva, oder der Fall Maria12which insults Our Lady, he received public criticism and protest from Mgr Graber, the Bishop of Regensburg. The Bishop of Cuernavaca, Mgr Arceo, was disowned by the Mexican episcopal conference when he maintained that Marxism was a necessary component of Christianity.13 The Bishop of Rotterdam, Mgr Simonis, walked out of the Third Dutch Pastoral Colloquium which his brothers in the episcopate continued to attend, conniving at proposals to ordain women and married men,14 while Mgr Gijsen, the Bishop of Roermond, effectively separated himself from the rest of the Dutch bishops by establishing his own seminary and rejecting the new forms of clerical training. When Mgr Simonis had declared it an error to assert that the Catholic Church was only a part of the Church, he was contradicted by Mgr Ernst, the Bishop of Breda, and Mgr Groot declared that Mgr Simonis’s doctrine was “squarely opposed to the teaching of Vatican II.”15 The bishops of a single country are often in disagreement on political questions. In the Mexican presidential elections of 1982, the majority recommended one candidate while a large minority supported one from an opposing party.16 There is a sharp contrast between the French and Italian bishops regarding communism. The Italians said being a Christian was incompatible with adherence to atheistic Marxism: freedom of political choice was limited by this objective incompatibility. The French bishops, on the other hand, decided at their meeting in 1975 to withdraw their official authorization from all youth, Catholic Action and workers’ movements and donner liberte aux mouvements de faire les options politiques qu’ils désirent.17All specifically Catholic social movements were suppressed because aucun mouvement ne peut jamais exprimer en lui seul la plénitude du témoignage chretien évangelique.18 Apart from the discrepancy in teaching between the two episcopates, what is important here is the motive inspiring the French. They presuppose that every possible kind of witness is simply a species belonging to the same genus, and that there are no species opposed to the genus. They also implicitly accuse the Catholic Church of being defective and of needing the aid of Marxism in order to give an integral witness, and foresee a kind of social syncretism in which contrasting ideas are completely obliterated and effaced.19 8.
Giomale del popolo, 28 October 1972. 62. The Church disunited over Humanae Vitae. The famous encyclical Humanae Vitae of 25 July 1968 gave rise to the most widespread, important and, in some respects, arrogant display of dissent within the Church. Almost all the episcopal conferences published a document about it, some supporting and some dissenting. Documents from bishops on the occasion of papal teachings or decisions are not a new thing in the Church; one need only remember how many letters from bishops to the people of their dioceses appeared under Pius IX. What is new is that such letters should express judgment rather than give assent, as if the principle Prima sedes a nemine iudicatur° had vanished.20 Everybody knows how lively the opposition to the definition of the doctrine of papal infallibility was in 1870, either as regards the content of the doctrine or the opportuneness of defining it, and how much controversy there was both in historico-theological debate and on the council floor. The German bishops were not agreed as to what attitude to take towards the writings of Dollinger, which were condemned by Mgr Ketteler, the Bishop of Mainz, but tolerated by others. Once the doctrine had been proclaimed, however, all those who had opposed a definition adhered within a few months to the one that had been made, with the exception of Strossmayer, who waited until 1881. Papal definitions used not only to fix the outlines of a disputed truth, but to settle the dispute, it being absurd that the Church’s teaching should be subject to a perpetual referendum. Because Vatican II had established the specific principle of collegiality, and the general idea of the corresponsibility of everyone for everything, Paul VI’s encyclical became a text open to different readings, in accordance with the hermeneutic we discussed in paragraph 50. Not just the bishops, but theologians, pastoral councils, national synods and the mass of ordinary people whether believers or not, joined in the process of debating and censuring the papal teaching. I will not attempt to cite the numberless publications on the encyclical, but limit myself to dissent by the bishops. Certainly, in pronouncing as he did, against the majority of experts on his own commission, against a large number of theologians, against the mentality of the age, and against the expectations which had been aroused by authoritative declarations and by his own attitude, and also (as some would have it) against his own opinion as a doctor privatus,21 Paul VI performed the most important act of his own pontificate. This is so not only because he set forth once more the essence of the old established teaching based on natural and supernatural truths, but also because the Pope s action, coming as it did in a context of dissent within the Church and exposing it to the full light of day, was very obviously an instance of one of those acts of the papal teaching authority which bind ex sese et non ex consensu Ecclesiae,22 as Vatican I put it. Dissent from the teaching was serious, widespread and public, and was apparent not only in episcopal documents but in a myriad of publications on how to read and apply the encyclical, all of them pushing it in the desired direction. The encyclical was attacked and misrepresented in the religious columns of magazines with a wide circulation. The misrepresentation of it in addresses and articles by the well-known Jesuit, Father Giacomo Perico, deserves special mention. In Arnica, a weekly with a circulation of seventy thousand, he wrote: “It is inaccurate to talk about new orientations in an absolute sense. What can be said is that certain churchmen in the past have given unduly restrictive interpretations of conjugal morality. That was a mistake.”23 The facts have been inverted here: it was not some churchmen, but the Church, all the Popes including Paul VI, and the whole of tradition which held the restrictive opinion. Some churchmen who held the opposing point of view were condemned. Fr. Perico kept up his misrepresentation of Humanae Vitae in courses of aggiornamento for the clergy, and in the Giornale delpopolo of 22 March 1972. I discussed his opinion in two articles in the same paper on 8 and 29 April. He alleged that “the norm contained in the encyclical regarding the use of contraceptives is clear: married couples ought not to have recourse to contraceptive techniques.” No, the encyclical says they must not. To change the Popes imperative into a conditional is to misrepresent the encyclical.24 Objections to the encyclical related either to its authority or its teaching. Cardinal Döpfner, the Archbishop of Munich, a supporter of contraceptives, stated: “I will now get in touch with the other bishops to see what help can be offered to the faithful.”25 It appears that in his view the faithful were to be helped against an encyclical which amounted to a hostile act directed against the human race. In America, where the bishops, it seems, had slyly anticipated the Pope’s decision and set up a contraceptive assistance program, the reaction was sharp. Attacking its own bishop, Cardinal O’Boyle, the Catholic University of Washington not only refused to accept the doctrine, in a declaration supported by two hundred theologians, but also attacked the Pope for rejecting the opinion of the majority on the papal commission, and for not consulting the episcopal college.26 Although they had generally been in favor of contraceptives, the German bishops accepted the teaching of Paul VI, but conceded the faithful the right to dissent in both theory and practice, on the grounds of the non-infallible authority of the document, thus referring them ultimately to the private judgment of their conscience, “provided that the dissenter asks himself in conscience whether he can allow himself to dissent in a responsible way before God.”27 In their view, rejection “does not mean a fundamental rejection of papal authority.” Perhaps, indeed, it does not mean a rejection of the foundations of that authority, but it certainly does mean a rejection of its concrete acts. There was a sensational demonstration of dissent in the German church at the Katholikentag at Essen in September 1968: amidst calls for the Pope’s resignation, the meeting discussed a resolution demanding a revision of the encyclical, and proceeded to pass it by an overwhelming majority, of five thousand to ninety, in the presence of the papal legate Gustavo Cardinal Testa and the whole German episcopate. The Osservatore Romano replied on 9 September, publishing a message from the Pope recalling German Catholics to faith and obedience.28 The rejection of the encyclical continued nonetheless with the Swiss synod of 1972, the German synod of Wtirzburg and the Konigstein declaration. The principal Swiss Catholic daily, Das Vaterland, refuses to this day to desist or relent in its opposition. The division of German Catholics, among themselves and from the See of Rome, continues and becomes ever more obvious. The Katholikentag of 1982 was opposed by a so-called “base Katholikentag made up of dissenting Catholics, held simultaneously and in parallel. The dissenters demand indiscriminate access to the Eucharist, the priesthood for women, and the abolition of priestly celibacy, while also celebrating a different Mass.29 20.
“The first See is judged by none.” [Gratian’s Decree,
A.D.I 140; cf. Canon 1404. Translator’s note.] 63. The Church disunited concerning the encyclical, continued. A deep division became apparent even in the English Church, where Mgr Roberts, the former Archbishop of Bombay, strongly attacked the encyclical and opposed Mgr Beck, the Archbishop of Liverpool, on the radio. The Tablet, the principal English Catholic publication, and generally orthodox, caused widespread surprise by a protest against the encyclical, demanding “the right and duty to protest when conscience demands”:30 conscience operating by the light of private judgment is here made the supreme rule of morality. Opposition to Humanae Vitae was general in the Dutch church, which was beset by disputes, assertions of independence and preschismatic experimentation. Even if he was not totally silent on the believers obligation to form his conscience by the teaching of the magisterium, Cardinal Alfrink maintained that since the encyclical was not pronounced with infallible authority, “individual conscience remains the most important norm.” The Vicar-General of the diocese of Breda stated on television that the faithful should continue to be guided by their own conscience. The commission of the pastoral council on the family described the encyclical as “incomprehensible and disappointing” and said it would continue on its own course. They all agreed that the matter defined by the Pope remained open and debatable. The same ultimate authority of individual conscience was the principal theme of the Canadian bishops. They also introduced the concept of a conflict of duties, which could only be weighed and decided by the spouses, because only they could know the unique circumstances in which those duties had to be fulfilled.31 The French bishops’ divergence from papal teaching was more obvious. They maintained that in a conflict of duties the conscience may rechercher devant Dieu quel devoir en l’occurrence est majeur,32 thus contradicting the doctrine of Humanae Vitae, paragraph 10, which states that it is never licit to will an act which is intrinsically disordered and consequently unworthy of the human person, even if one intends to safeguard the good of an individual or family. It is clear that they are misrepresenting the traditional, and papally accepted, theory which allows for that sort of weighing up of choices only when an intrinsically disordered act, such as frustrating conception, is not involved: what is intrinsically illicit never becomes licit in any circumstances. A supposed conflict of duties is purely subjective and psychological, never objective and moral. What is more, to teach that moral duties are to be waived whenever they encounter difficulties which are “humanly” insupportable, is an error which religion has always fought, since from the religious perspective no difficulty can take precedence over one’s duty. The French bishops’ position was indirectly criticized by a notice published in the Osservatore Romano of 13 September 1968 denying that their position had been approved by the Holy See. Even though it said in its usual euphemistic way on 13 January 1969 that “no episcopate has questioned the doctrinal principles recalled by the Pope,”33 the paper was forced to admit that “some of the bishops’ expressions could cause concern as to the true meaning of their utterances.”34 Resistance to Humanae Vitae in Italy was more muted but no less widespread. I cite opposition to the encyclical from Fa-miglia cristiana, the weekly published by the Paulists, with a circulation of one and a half million copies, on sale in all parishes. In its issue of 23 May and 20 June 1976 Father Bernard Haring, C.Ss.R., defended contraception and adopted the French bishops’ line. The Osservatore Romano attacked and refuted him on 14 July 1976 but he continued to teach against the encyclical.35 30.
I.C.I., No.317-18, 1968, suppl., p. xiv. Dissent in the Dutch church was of the sharpest kind36 and, supported by the majority of the country’s bishops, it amounted to doubting whether the Pope had any authority unless he exercised it collegially As a general rule, the Roman Church weakened the bonds of its unity in the post-conciliar period, not only where they had been too tight, but also in cases where the local churches had been bound to each other by means of their common links with Rome. It forgot the great maxim of the art of politics: that the greater the mass and the more diverse the compound in which unity is to be maintained, the stronger the weight of authority needs to be. This cardinal principle of politics was recognized and acted upon by the ancients. Tacitus37 has Galba saying, as he chooses Piso as his successor, that the great mass of the empire cannot be kept in equilibrium without a single guide. The need for an arrangement of this sort was generally given as the historical justification for the transition of Rome from a republic to a monarchy. At the opening of the third session of the council on 14 September 1964, Paul VI also remarked that “the vaster the catholic extension of the Church becomes, the more she stands in need of a central guide in the interests of unity.” The application of the difficult principle of collegiality led to a clash with the central principle that unifies diversities while at the same time preserving and sustaining them in their proper places, within the organic unity of the body of the Church. The abscess opened, as the doctors say, with the Dutch pastoral council, a large assembly representative of all groups in the Church, meeting with the bishops present. By a nine to one majority the meeting voted for the abolition of priestly celibacy, the employment of secularized priests in pastoral positions, the ordination of women, the right of bishops to exercise a deliberative vote on papal decrees, and of the laity to do the same regarding rulings by their bishops. In order to meet “the wish of many people wanting to know what the Holy See’s attitude to the Dutch council is” the Osservatore Romano of 13 January 1970 published an autograph letter by Paul VI to the Dutch bishops. The letter is typical of the character of Paul’s pontificate: the eye sees the damage and the error, but neither by medicine nor by cautery nor by knife, is the hand put to the evil to combat and cure it. The Pope “cannot disguise the fact that certain projects and reports accepted by the bishops as a basis for discussion and certain doctrinal statements in them leave him perplexed and seem to him to merit serious reservations.” He then expresses “well founded reservations about the criteria for the representation of Dutch Catholics at the plenary assembly.” He is “profoundly struck” by the fact that Vatican II is “very rarely cited” and the thinking and proposals of the Dutch gathering “do not seem to harmonize at all with conciliar and papal acts. In particular the mission of the Church is represented as purely earthly, the priestly ministry as being an office conferred by the community, priesthood is dissociated from celibacy and attributed to women, and not a word is said of the pope except to minimize his responsibilities and the powers bestowed upon him by Christ.” After this catalogue of errors, sometimes affecting the essence of the Church, such as the denial of the sacramental priesthood and the Petrine primacy, the Pope concludes, in the original French, with these words: Notre responsabilité de Pasteur de l’Eglise universelle Nous oblige à vous demander en toute franchise: que pensez-vous que Nous puissions faire pour vous aider, pour renforcer votre autorité, pour vous permettre de surmonter les dijfrcultés présentes de l’Eglise en Hollande?38 In view of the Popes previous account of the Dutch attack on essential articles of the Catholic system, with the bishops either consenting or conniving, what was required was that the bishops be invited to reaffirm the faith of the Church on those points, but instead of demanding such a reaffirmation, Paul offers the Dutch bishops his service to help them strengthen their authority, when in fact it is not theirs but his own which is not being recognized: to help them, he says, to overcome the difficulties of the Church in Holland, when the difficulties of the universal Church are the real issue. The words the Pope addresses to Cardinal Alfrink would be more suitable if he had been opposed to the schism. The words the Pope uses to console himself also have a peculiar sound: “strengthened by the support of so many brothers in the episcopate.” It is a hard thing for the Pope not to be able to say ally and to have to rest merely upon the strength of a large number, which is not a principle in any order of moral values. The weakness of Paul VI’s attitude is apparent a posteriori as well, in that in an interview with the Corriere della sera on 30 January, that is after the papal letter had been sent to him, Cardinal Alfrink continued to assert that the main points criticized by the Pope should not be resolved by central authority, “but according to the principle of collegiality, that is, by the episcopal college of the whole world, of which the Pope is the head.” The bishop was forgetting that the college is only consultative and that its authority, even thus limited, comes from the Pope. When he went on to state that “a schism can only occur on a matter of faith,” he was lapsing into a formal error and confusing schism with heresy, since schism is a separation from the discipline of the Church and a rejection of authority. St. Thomas treats it as a sin against charity, while heresy is one against faith.39 36.
I will not expand upon the frequent cases
of the clergy of whole dioceses refusing to receive a bishop appointed
by Rome. It happened at Botucatu in Brazil, but Mgr Zioni stood
up to an attempt to make him resign, describing the rebels as “priests
of low intellectual level.” I.C.I., No.315, 1 July 1968, p.8. The
nomination of Mgr Mamie as auxiliary to Mgr Carriere, Bishop of
Fribourg in Switzerland, also aroused opposition among the clergy.
Corriere della sera, 21 August 1968. 65. The renunciation of authority. A confidence of Paul VI. The external fact is the disunity of the Church, visible in the disunity of the bishops among themselves, and with the Pope. The internal fact producing it is the renunciation that is, the non-functioning, of papal authority itself, from which the renunciation of all other authority derives. In whatever social setting it is exercised, authority has a necessary and some would say a constitutive function in society, because a society is always a collection of free wills that needs to be unified. The role of authority is to effect this unification, which is not a reduction of all wills ad unum, but a coordination of their freedom by a united intent. It must direct men’s freedom towards a social goal, by laying down the means, that is the order, in which it will be reached. Authority thus has a double function: it is merely rational in as far as it discovers and promulgates the order by which a society will operate; but it is practical in as far as it commands that order, by arranging the parts of the social organization in accordance with it. This second act of authority is governing. Now, the peculiar feature of the pontificate of Paul VI was the tendency to shift the papacy from governing to admonishing or, in scholastic terminology, to restrict the field of preceptive law, which imposes an obligation, and to enlarge the field of directive law, which formulates a rule without imposing any obligation to observe it. The government of the Church thus loses half its scope, or to put it biblically, the hand of the Lord is foreshortened.40 This breviatio manus can have several causes: an imperfect understanding of the evils to be dealt with, a lack of moral strength, or even a prudential calculation that to set one’s hand to correct the admitted evils would not cure them but only make them worse. Papa Montini was temperamentally inclined to favor this enervation of his authority by a side of his character which can be seen in his private diaries and which he admitted to the Sacred College in his speech of 22 June 1972, on the ninth anniversary of his election: “Perhaps the Lord did not call me to this service because I have any special aptitude for it, or in order that I should govern the Church and save it in its present difficulties, but in order that I should suffer something for the Church and make it clear that He and no other is guiding and saving it.” This is a remarkable confession.41 It is quite beyond the limits of expectation, whether looked at from an historical or theological point of view, for Peter to be backward in the service of guiding the barque of the Church (to govern is in fact derived from the nautical expression to pilot) which has been given to him by Christ, and to take refuge in a desire to suffer for the Church. The papal office entails a service of working and governing. The exercise of government was, however, alien to Montini’s character and vocation: the man could not find it within him to bring together his soul and his circumstances: peregrinum est opus eius ab eo.42 Furthermore, in letting his own inclinations take precedence over the demands of his office, the Pope seems to imply that there is more humility in suffering than in working to fulfill his functions. I am not sure the idea is justified: is it necessarily more humble to set oneself the goal of suffering for the Church than to admit that one must work for it? That the Pope saw his task as giving directions rather than prescriptive commands, led him to think that the giving of such directions summed up the whole nature of the Petrine ministry. This is very clear in a letter to Archbishop Lefebvre.43 Having recognized that the Church is in a very serious condition, beset by a collapse in faith, dogmatic deviations, and a rejection of subordination to hierarchical authority, the Pope also recognizes that it is pre-eminently his task to “identify and correct” the deviations and goes on to declare that he has never stopped raising his voice to refute wild or excessive systems, whether theoretical or practical. Lastly he protests that: Re quidem vera nihil unquam nee ullo modo omisimus quin sollicitudinem Nos-tram servandae in Ecclesia fidelitatis erga veri nominis Traditionem testificaremur.44 Now, acts of government have always been reckoned as pertaining to the highest office in the Church, that is acts of a commanding and binding power, without which even the teaching of the truths of the faith remains a merely theoretical and academic business. Two things are needed to maintain truth. First: remove the error from the doctrinal sphere, which is done by refuting erroneous arguments and showing that they are not convincing. Second: remove the person in error, that is depose him from office, which is done by an act of the Church’s authority. If this pontifical service is not performed, it would seem unjustified to say that all means have been used to maintain the doctrine of the Church: we are in the presence of a breviatio manus Domini.45As a consequence, a narrowed idea of authority and obedience is spread abroad, without meeting any effective resistance, and ideas about freedom and open debate are correspondingly broadened. The origin of this whole breviatio manus lies quite clearly in the opening speech of the Second Vatican Council, which announced an end to the condemnation of error, a policy which was maintained by Paul VI throughout the whole of his pontificate. As a teacher, he held to the traditional formulas expressing the orthodox faith, but as a pastor, he did not prevent the free circulation of unorthodox ideas, assuming that they would of themselves eventually take an orthodox form and become compatible with truth. Errors were identified and the Catholic faith reiterated, but specific persons were not condemned for their erroneous teaching, and the schismatic situation in the Church was disguised and tolerated.46 It was John Paul II who began to restore the full ambit of papal government, whether by individually condemning and removing some teachers of error, or by re-establishing Catholic principles in the Church in Holland by means of an extraordinary synod of the bishops of that province, held in Rome. Paul VI preferred to give speeches and warnings which recalled people to their duty without condemning them, made them aware of something without putting them under an obligation, and gave directions without insisting that they be followed. In his solemn apostolic exhortation Paterna of 8 December 1974, addressed to the whole Catholic world, the Pope denounces those who “attempt to destroy the Church from within” (while euphemistically comforting himself that such people were relatively rare); he enlarges on the subject of refusal of obedience to an authority which is accused of “upholding a system and apparatus of ecclesiastical power”; he deplores a theological pluralism in rebellion against the magisterium; he protests loudly adversus talem agendi modum perfidum,47 he goes so far as to apply to himself the defense of his own episcopal authority which St. John Chrysostom made: Quamdiu in hac sede sedemuSy quamdiu praesidemus, habemus et auctoritatem et virtutem, etiamsi simus indigni.48 The Pope laments and denounces and defends and accuses, but in the very act of defending authority he reduces it to a warning: as if merely a party in the case rather than the judge, he makes the accusation but will not pass sentence. The general effect of a renunciation of authority is to bring authority into disrepute and to lead it to be ignored by those who are subject to it, since a subject cannot hold a higher view of authority than authority holds of itself. One French archbishop has said: Aujourd’hui l’Eglise n’a plus à enseigner, à commander, à condamner, mais à aider les hommes à vivre et à s’épanouir.49And to descend from the Palatine to the Suburra, at a round table of priests, organized by the newspaper LEspresso in 1969, it was maintained that the Pope was like a layman, or to be precise, that he was like a policeman set on a stand higher than other people so that he can direct the traffic. It is alleged that the ever present disputes which make the Church today so different from the historical and preconciliar Church, are the distinctive feature of authentic religion and a symptom of the Church’s vitality, rather than an abnormal or pathological phenomenon. There is never a papal document on which the episcopates of the world fail to take up their own position, and in their train, but independently of them, theologians and the laity do the same, contradicting each other in their turn. A host of documents is thus churned out, displaying a disorderly variety in which authority is multiplied and so nullified. 40.
Isaiah, 59:1. 66. An historic parallel. Paul VI and Pius DC The disjunction between the holding of the supreme office and the exercise of its powers, which we have noted in Paul VI, has a precedent in the pontificate of Pius IX, not because he limited his spiritual functions by refusing to make condemnations, but because he limited his secular authority by refusing to exercise certain powers inherent in it. Antonio Rosmini s criticism of Pius IX s political policies, made in a letter of May 1848 to Cardinal Castracane,50 can be applied to the religious policies of Paul VI. “A prince who neither prevents anarchy nor makes any effort to prevent it, who allows people to do everything that he declares he does not want done, and who indirectly supports things that are done against his expressed wish, does not seem to be fulfilling the duties which pertain to his principate.” Rosmini was thinking of Pius IX’s foreign policy, that is his refusal, because of his high regard for his office as universal pastor, to make the military alliances which Rosmini believed were imposed upon him by his duties as an Italian ruler. There is an analogy in the psychological situation of the two popes. One case shows the difficulties which the union of spiritual primacy and a temporal dominion create for the latter. The other shows the incompatibility of the possession of a spiritual primacy and a refusal to use the authority inherent in it. If the character of the Catholic priesthood seemed to Pius IX incompatible with his exercising all the functions of a temporal ruler, his only course was to give up those functions altogether, or to overcome his reluctance to exercise them. Similarly, since the exercise of authority seemed to Paul VI to be incompatible with a pastoral ministry, he had no other choice than to give up the supreme government (and there were signs that he might do so)51 or else to carry out a complete restoration of the way authority was being exercised. The difference between the two cases lies in the fact that with Pius IX the element to be renounced was something extrinsic, which had been useful to the spiritual power, but which could be set aside without doing that power any harm; while with Paul VI, what had been given up was intrinsic to the spiritual government, and to give it up was to derange the Church’s internal workings, which are based on the idea of subordination, not independence. Although he failed to use his full political force, Pius IX still ran the risk of using his spiritual authority improperly in political matters; he did refuse to wage war, but he excommunicated the combatants all the same. In Paul VI’s case, the temporal power had been wholly or almost wholly lost, and he rightly trusted to his spiritual authority, but at the same time reduced it by half through fear of using it in an unspiritual way; dealing with error by commands and penalties was for him an abuse, something repugnant to the true nature of the Church and appropriate for temporal rather than spiritual matters.52 50.
This can be read in his Epistolario Complete,
Casale 1892, Vol. X, pp.312-9. The comments that Manzoni made
on the letter on 23 May 1848, when it had been shown to him by Rosmini,
are significant. See Epistolario, cit. Vol. II, p.447. It is important nonetheless to state that for Paul VI this renunciation of authority did not mean a renunciation of dogmatic principles, which he in fact forcibly reaffirmed in his major doctrinal encyclicals such as Humanae Vitae, on marriage, and Mysterium Fidei, on the Eucharist. He also asserted the principle of the plenitude of papal power to iudicare omnia,53referring expressly to the famous bull Unam sanctam of Boniface VIII, in a speech made on 22 October 1970: everything is subject to the keys of Peter. The renunciation simply means that doctrinal assertions were separated from that exercise of authority, in the form of commands and sanctions, which, in the Church’s tradition, is designed to support them. Man is still under an obligation to obey, but the Church has no corresponding right to require that obedience. It is as if men were not united socially, but simply left in isolation with their own private judgment: the authority of the Church is therefore never the ultimate determinant of what a Christian does. In his speech of 18 June 1970 Pope Paul spoke at length about papal authority in a fully Catholic sense; while describing the Petrine primacy as a service, he nonetheless declared: “The fact that Jesus Christ has willed His Church to be governed in a spirit of service does not mean that the Church should not have the power of hierarchical government: the conferral of the keys on Peter does mean something.” The Pope recalls the fact that the authority of the apostles is none other than the authority of Christ Himself transmitted to them, and does not disguise the fact that it is a power in virga,54 a power to punish and to consign to Satan. It is thus undeniable that Pauls renunciation of authority was accompanied by an assertion of the existence of that authority without any breviatio manus, and equally undeniable that this paradox was characteristic of Pauls style, but uncharacteristic of the Church in general. The presentation of authority as a kind of service is quite usual in Catholicism, which sees the whole of life in that light: the catechism says that man is born “to know, love and serve God.” It should not therefore seem odd that authority itself is seen as a kind of service. When the Pope uses the title of servus servorum Dei, originally assumed by Pope St. Gregory the Great as a description of the power of the Supreme Keys, one must remember that the formula servus servorum is not a genitive of object, as if the pope were the one who serves the servants of God, but an hebraic genitive signifying a superlative sense as in saecula saeculorurriy virgo virginumy caeli caelorum,55 and so on. The formula therefore means that the pope is the servant of God more than all others, the servant of God par excellence, not that he is the servant of those who are the servants of God. Were it otherwise, the formula would tend to imply that the pope was the servant of men rather than of God, and would also imply that only the pope was not a servant of God, while everyone else was. Finally, it is important to emphasize that if authority is a service to those over whom it is exercised, the fact that it is a service does not take away from it the element of inequality which is essential to its existence and in virtue of which the one giving orders is as such more important than the one receiving them. Authority and obedience cannot therefore be brought together on a basis of perfect equality. In fact the very word authority (coming from augere, to augment) shows that someone who is invested with it is endowed with some increase over and above his own person, and suggests a transcendent relation of the sort which has always been recognized in Catholic philosophy. 53.
“Judge all things.” 68. The renunciation of authority, continued. The affair of the French catechism. The renunciation of authority, even as applied to doctrinal affairs, which had been begun by John XXIII and pursued by Paul VI, was continued by John Paul II. The new catechism put out by the French bishops is at odds with Catholic doctrine on some important points,56 and also abandons the usual form of catechisms. In an address delivered in Lyons and Paris in January 1983, Cardinal Ratzinger criticized its mistaken inspiration at some length. This seemed to be a warning and a correction. But the same renunciation of authority which had been manifested in the case of the Dutch catechism, and in the feeble condemnation of Hans Kiing, whose false teaching had been allowed to continue unchecked, meant that Cardinal Ratzinger withdrew his criticisms almost at once, and his withdrawal could then be publicized by the French bishops in La Croix on 19 March 1983. There we read that the Cardinal entendait traiter de la situation globale de la catéchèse, et non désavouer le travail catéchétique en France. Nous avons pu de vive voix vérifier récemment notre accord avec lui sur tous les points.57 Cardinal Ratzingers retraction shows the point to which Roman authority has retreated in the face of the emancipated bishops. Although canon 775 of the new Code of Canon Law lays down that episcopal conferences cannot publish catechisms for their territories without the prior approval of the Holy See, the French bishops promulgated theirs without approval and even forbade the use of any other text, thus prohibiting even the catechisms of the Council of Trent and of St. Pius X. After having spoken in his address of the misère de la catéchèse nouvelle,58and of désagrégation,59 he now seems at one with the French bishops in valuing and praising that same misery and breakup. Not even the natural resentment of a member of the Curia for this despising of Roman authority, or a concern for personal coherence succeeded in evoking a display of fortitude. St. Thomas teaches that fortitude, inasmuch as it means resoluteness of spirit, is not only a special virtue concerned principally with offering resistance, but also the general “form” of all the virtues. We have already mentioned60 the breviatio manus which consists in reducing the role of authority to the mere giving of warnings. These warnings ought at least to be coherent, and free of pliable opportunism. It seems, however, that they are merely verbal declarations, and that the voice of the Church has been reduced to being simply an echo of the fashions of the world. Cardinal Ratzingers retraction is typical of the post-conciliar Church and demonstrates all the main problems that beset it: the decay of papal authority, the emancipation of the episcopal conferences, the dissension in the Church, and a decline in the force of logic and in attachment to dogmatic truths. Another display of the decline of authority in the Church and of incoherence in its acts, which now drift with the times, can be had from examining the proposals Papa Luciani made during his short pontificate. He said it was his intention to “conserve intact the great discipline of the Church” and addressed his collaborators who were, he said, “called to a strict following of the Popes wishes and to the honor of an activity which commits them to holiness of life, a spirit of obedience, the works of the apostolate and to a strong and exemplary love of the Church.”61 Everyone knows from subsequent events the response there has been to this statement of aims. The renunciation of authority is not merely a prudent bending of a principle in the light of contemporary circumstances: it has instead itself become a principle. The Prefect for the Congregation of the Clergy, Silvio Cardinal Oddi, admitted as much at a conference of eight hundred members of “Catholics United for the Faith” held at Arlington in the United States in July 1983. The Cardinal admitted that there was confusion about the faith and said that many catechists today choose certain articles of the depositum fidei62 which they are going to believe, and abandon all the rest. Doctrines such as the divinity of Christ, the virginity of the Mother of God, original sin, the real presence in the Eucharist, the absoluteness of moral obligation, hell and the primacy of Peter are publicly denied by theologians and bishops in pulpits and in academic chairs. The Prefect for the Congregation of the Clergy was insistently asked why the Holy See did not remove those who taught error, such as Fr. Curran, who had for years been openly attacking Humanae Vitae, and who teaches the licitness of sodomy. Why was it that the Holy See did not correct and disavow those bishops, such as Mgr Gerety, who depart from sound doctrine and protect those who corrupt the faith? The Cardinal replied that “The Church no longer imposes punishments. She hopes instead to persuade those who err.” She has chosen this course “perhaps because she does not have precise information about the different cases in which error arises, perhaps because she thinks it imprudent to take energetic measures, perhaps too because she wants to avoid causing an even greater scandal through disobedience. The Church believes it is better to tolerate certain errors in the hope that when certain difficulties have been overcome, the person in error will reject his error and return to the Church.”63 This is an admission of the breviatio manus we discussed in paragraphs 65-67 and an assertion of the innovation announced in the opening speech of the council:64 error contains within itself the means of its own correction, and there is no need to assist the process: it is enough to let it unfold, and it will correct itself. Charity is held to be synonymous with tolerance, indulgence takes precedence over severity, the common good of the ecclesial community is overlooked in the interests of a misused individual liberty, the sensus logicus65 and the virtue of fortitude proper to the Church are lost. The reality is that the Church ought to preserve and defend the truth with all the means available to a perfect society.66 56.
As we will show in paragraph 136. 69. Character of Paul VI. Self-portrait. Cardinal Gut. There is room for debate ad infinitum on the character of Paul VI. It seems to some that he was paralyzed by an excessive breadth of vision. If St. Thomas’s profound theory about how we make a decision is correct, then to decide is to put an end to the intellect’s contemplation of different possible courses of action; and thus the greater the number of possibilities considered, that is the wider the view the intellect has, the longer it takes to break off and make a decision. That is Jean Guitton’s analysis of Paul VI’s character67 and it is one shared by John XXIII. Other people, however, think it is not a question of character but of a far reaching plan which was always perfectly clear in Pope Paul’s mind. What he was aiming at was an adaptation of the Church to the spirit of the age, with the goal of taking over direction of the whole human race, at a purely humanitarian level, and so Pope Paul proceeded cautiously, leaning now to one side and now to the other, acting quite voluntarily and not under constraint, and moving always in the direction of the pre-established goal. Others believe that the Pope did have such a goal in mind, but that in leaning to one side or the other he was driven by circumstances. This view would seem to be confirmed by the self-portrait that Paul VI sketched on 15 December 1969, borrowing a nautical simile from St. Gregory the Great. The Pope presents himself as a pilot who sometimes takes the waves with the prow head on and sometimes dodges their force by turning the ship to the side, but is forever tossed about and under stress. In either of the two latter interpretations it is clear that what the Pope does is adjusted to circumstances and is partly passive, as indeed is all human activity; but in the latter of the two views, passive reaction is the dominant element, and the one which stamps the character of Paul’s pontificate. A remark made by Cardinal Gut, the Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, apropos of liturgical abuses is relevant here. Beaucoup de pretres ont fait ce qui leur plaisait. lis se sont imposes. Les initiatives prises sans autorisation on ne pouvait plus bien souvent les arreter. Dans sa grande bonte et sa sagesse le Saint Pere a alors cede, souvent contre son gré.68 It is obvious that giving in to those who break the law is neither goodness nor wisdom, unless one gives in after a struggle and maintains the law at least by protesting. Furthermore, since wisdom is a practical discernment of the means appropriate to the attainment of an end, it can hardly be reconciled with the idea of giving up that end. Giving up the law could also be seen as joining what had proved to be the larger party in the Church. It could be equivalent to a decision to change the law in a way the majority desired, thus making it more acceptable and easier to follow. In disciplinary matters this is a plausible point of view, but hardly very plausible when the law is abandoned to support a riotous minority instead of the obedient majority. The latter occurred regarding the option of taking communion in the hand, which two-thirds of the bishops of the world had said they did not support. The option was granted first of all to the French who had improperly introduced it, and requests were then made that it be extended to the whole world. That an abuse should be the grounds for abrogating a law has never been admitted, or regarded as admissible. It was, however, precisely what happened in the case of the scheme for the radical reform of the Mass, which, having been proposed to the bishops and rejected by them, was nonetheless taken up and promulgated for use everywhere, under pressure from powerful people. 67.
Op.cit.,p.l4. 70. Yes and no in the post-conciliar Church. Renunciation of authority brings with it uncertainty and flux regarding the law. By receding from its own positions, authority denies and contradicts itself, giving rise to a sic et non69in which doctrinal certainty and practical stability are lost. The old adage lex dubia non obligat70applied to the situation we have described leads to a failing authority seconding the successive impositions of those who rebel against it, and the rebels thus become the source of law. Uncertainty about the law, created by the hesitations of authority, is very obvious in the whole liturgical reform, which was carried through in disorderly fashion by the withdrawal of prohibitions, the repeated broadening of options and the introduction of experimental practices: from this uncertainty, and from the introduction of the principle that the celebrant should be creative, there arose a vast variety of celebrations: while the official rite contained only four canons, thousands of canons were produced, with book upon book suggesting new ones, drawn up by diocesan liturgical commissions or by private individuals, some of this with the approval of the Holy See. This multiplicity of ritual forms is deplored by those who approved the liturgical reform originally, and is complained of by those who dislike it. The most obvious evidence of the breakup of the Catholic rites through the renunciation of authority is to be found in the almost total disappearance of prescriptive rubrics, the frequency of rubrics which merely advise or recommend, and in the multiplication of possible alternatives: the celebrant will make this gesture, or he will not, or he will make another one according to circumstances of time and place which, except in one or two instances, are left to his own judgment. It should also be remembered that since many faculties which were previously reserved to the Holy See have been devolved upon the bishops, the bishops are now the judges of how they should be used, and thus new discrepancies are created between nation and nation, diocese and diocese, and even between one parish and another. This discrepancy can be seen, for instance, in the practice of communion in the hand, which is permitted in universal law, practiced in some countries, more or less obligatory in others, and forbidden in yet others.71 The sic of the law and the non of an authority which refuses to enforce it sometimes come together in strikingly illogical ways as, for example, in Notitiae, the bulletin of the Congregation of Divine Worship, 1969 ed., p.351, which publishes simultaneously an Instructio forbidding something and a decree permitting the same thing. The vacillation of authority in the matter of the order in which children should receive the two sacraments of Penance and the Eucharist is just as apparent. Some episcopal conferences kept the old practice of making a sacramental confession before receiving Holy Communion for the first time, while others made a change by reversing the order for not very convincing psychological reasons. Not convincing, because if the child is allegedly too immature to understand its own sinfulness, how is it mature enough to understand the real presence in the sacrament? The German episcopal conference first of all decreed, in agreement with Cardinal Döpfner, that children should be admitted to the Eucharist without first making a confession, then, a few years later, in agreement with Cardinal Ratzinger, Döpfner s successor, it decreed that first communion should be preceded by confession. It is obvious that uncertainty about the law, which has become something very changeable and which is in practice applied diversely in accordance with the differing opinions of differing people, has had the effect of increasing the importance placed on private judgment, and of producing a multiplicity of individual choices in which the organic unity of the Church is eclipsed and disappears. 69.
“Yes and no.” 71. The renunciation of authority, continued. The reform of the Holy Office. At this point a word must be said about the reform of the Holy Office, promulgated by the motu proprio, Integrae servan-dae of 7 December 1965 and by the subsequent notification Post litteras apostolicas of 14 June 1966. The notification expresses the renunciation of authority in the clearest possible way and makes it clear that there are to be no more obligations imposed by law, only obligations imposed by conscience, through its relationship with the moral law. It states that the Index of Forbidden Books remains morally binding, but no longer has the force of ecclesiastical law with its attendant censures. The reason for making it no longer binding is that the Christian people are presumed to have such religious and intellectual maturity as to e lights unto themselves. Indeed we read in the document that “the Church trusts that such maturity exists in the Christian people.” Historians will have to decide whether this supposed maturity actually existed, and whether it was grounds for abolishing the prohibition. The Church moreover places “the firmest hope in the vigilant care of ordinaries72 whose duty it is to examine and prevent the publication of harmful books, and where necessary, to reprove and admonish the authors.” It is all too obvious that this supposed doctrinal vigilance on the part of ordinaries is a modus irrealis73 since their doctrine is neither firm, nor concordant nor, at times, sound; nor can ordinaries prevent the publication of harmful books if they are not given the right to demand that books be submitted to their judgment in advance. But in fact, as is stated in the decree of 19 March 1975, the Church confines itself to enixe commendare74 that priests should not publish without the permission of their bishops; and that bishops should guard the faith and require that books on matters of faith and morals should be submitted to them by authors, who have however no corresponding obligation to submit them. The Church asks lastly that all the faithful cooperate with their pastors in this matter. The entire disciplinary reform is based upon the hidden assumption that individuals are immediately subject to the law, without the mediation of any authority, and that they may be presumed to have a maturity which, in the older view, the Church was trying to give them through the whole of its legislative activity. It is also clear that there has been a transition from the realm of commands and prohibitions to that of mere directions and exhortations, in which error is identified, but the person in error is not disciplined, since it is supposed, in accordance with what was said in the opening speech at the council, that error will of itself generate its own refutation and produce assent to the truths opposed to it. So far as reading books is concerned, the freedom the Church now allows the faithful is the ordinary freedom that anyone has, subject to the moral law. But is it right to allow the same freedom where the writing of books is concerned, given that publishing is not a private and passing activity, but something public, permanent and independent of the author, and which produces effects beyond his control? The state ought to grant such freedom, but the state is based on different principles from the Church; principles which are not specifically religious. In the Church, a different set of first principles leads to a different set of conclusions. The abolition of the Index librorum prohibitorum is a renunciation of authority: it purports to maintain the prohibitions entailed by the moral law, but refuses to say, specifically, what they are; that is, it refers the consciences of the faithful to universal principles so that they can make the particular application of them themselves. The post-conciliar Church did not officially allow an absolute liberty in the publishing of books, and reserved the right to judge their orthodoxy with a view to the common good. The Church has a duty to preserve its members from error, as well as to teach Catholic doctrine whole and entire. Both duties were acknowledged in the opening speech of the council75 but the first was merged with the second: it was alleged that teaching alone was enough to enable the Christian to preserve himself from error, since he was deemed able to protect himself by his own sound judgments. When Paul III originally established the Congregation of the Holy Office in 1542, its aim was “to combat heresies and consequently to repress offenses against the faith.” Paul VI thinks “it seems better that the defense of the faith should be made by means of a commitment to foster doctrine, so that while errors are corrected and those in error are sweetly recalled to better counsels, those who proclaim the Gospel receive new strength.” As in Pope John’s opening speech, these loving methods are based on two presuppositions: first, that provided error is allowed to develop, it will find its way to truth; and second, that either because of his natural constitution or because of the point that civilization has now reached, man has achieved such a state of maturity that, “the faithful will follow the Church’s path more fully and lovingly...if the content of the faith and the nature of morals are (merely) demonstrated.” 72.
i.e., Bishops. 72. Critique of the reform of the Holy Office. In paragraphs 40 and 41, I have already touched on the connection this position has with an anthropocentric mentality, and I will do so again later. I want here simply to point out the juridical and psychological confusion of persons with things which underlies the reforms. There used to be an Index of Forbidden Books, not an Index of Forbidden Authors. This distinction continues to be ignored in disputes about the reform, just as it was in the implementation of the reform itself. Is there anything wrong, as people allege, in passing judgment on a book without hearing the authors explanations? There would be, if the meaning of a precise piece of writing had to be gathered from the authors intentions or from the explanation he gave of it, rather than from the writing itself. A book is a thing in itself which has, indeed is, its own meaning. It is made up of words, and words are more than the person who utters them, since they have an objective meaning set within them. A writer needs to know how to make his subjective meaning come together with the objective meaning of his language. One can intend to say something that is not in fact said, and hence the mark of good writing, that is of true writing, is to say what one really wanted to. The mark of bad writing is, conversely, to say what was not intended. Thus a book can profess atheism, while its author believes himself a theist. The additions an author makes to a book, once it has been published, do not alter the nature of the book. Even if, per impossibile, they were to change its nature and make it quite irreproachable, no notice should be taken of that insofar as the already circulating book is concerned. The reason for this is obvious. The justificatory additions an author may subsequently make cannot accompany his books wherever they go; they run their course alone: Parve sine me, liber, ibis in urbem.76 It is a matter of distinguishing between one thing and another, between a person and a book. A matter of recognizing, as Plato did,77 that a book is not like a person in conversation, who can turn this way and that to make himself understood by somebody questioning him, and who can clarify, refine and explain: a book always says the same thing, namely what its words express when taken in their natural sense, and that is all. Nor let it be said that words do not have a meaning of their own within a given idiom: they may lack meaning sitting in a dictionary, but they certainly have meaning in a particular act of speech. If they did not, what would all the critics in the world be doing? Do they refrain from making judgment until they have been able to speak to the author? Do they ask an author for the meaning of his works, or do they extract it from the work itself? And of course great masterpieces, including the very greatest in each language, which are the source of the poetry, and indeed of the whole culture of a particular people, have no owner; they attain to a kind of superhuman impersonality. But nobody has ever thought their value cannot be judged because their authors are unknown. So far from the comprehension of a work depending on a knowledge of its sometimes rather obscure author, such as Shakespeare or Homer (if the latter was a single individual, which Wolf78 denies), one could maintain, as Flaubert did, that the personal character of the author should not enter into the work and that a perfect writer is one who makes posterity think he never existed. But to return to the reform of the Holy Office, a writers intention cannot prevent written words from expressing error if error is what they express. The fixed meaning of words is the basis of all communication between men. It is not a question of judging the state of someone’s conscience, but of knowing the meaning of words. Nor is it true that in examining books the Holy Office did not pay attention to every aspect of the work in question. Every aspect of the book was precisely what it did ex-amine; not the intentions of its author. Nor should anyone adduce the example of the Inquisition’s repeated long interviews with Giordano Bruno between 1582 and 1600, because the conversations were in that case not concerned with the true meaning of the philosopher’s books, but with getting him to repent and retract. Benedict XIV79 decreed in his day that a con-suitor should be specifically delegated to defend a book under examination, not by expounding the authors intentions but by interpreting the words of the text in their proper sense; and this practice was, I believe, maintained. Thus the accusations made against the established procedures stem from a failure to understand the objective and independent nature of every piece of writing; in short, from a failure in the art of literary criticism.80 76. “You will go, little book, to Rome without me.” Ovid. One publication can only be corrected or disowned by another. In itself, it has an unchanging meaning which can only be “retracted” (both in the sense of “rehandled” and of “withdrawn”) by the appearance of another publication. Under the new rules, the Holy Office listens to the author’s defense and requests that the clarifications which he has given to bring the book within the bounds of orthodoxy be published by him. If the author refuses to publish them, the whole business becomes even more unpleasant. That is what happened in Fr. Schillebeeckx’s case. See Le Monde, 10 December 1980. He refused to publish the statements he had made to the Holy Office, which in turn limited itself to publishing the letter in which it listed the corrections he was to incorporate. 77.
Protagoras, 329A. 73. Change in the Roman Curia. Lack of precision. The passion for innovation enveloped the whole Curia, not only reordering its traditional form, as St. Pius X had done in 1908 following the example of many of his predecessors, but also changing the functions of long established congregations. All the names were changed. The Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith became the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, and the Congregation of the Consistory became the Congregation for Bishops. New congregations were created with the title of commissions, councils or secretariats: one for Christian unity, one for non-Christian religions, one for non-believers, one for social communications, one for the apostolate of the laity, and so on. The change in names is not without its significance. The propagation of the faith carried with it the notion of the expansion of Catholicism among unbelieving peoples, while the concept of evangelization is generic and is already applied to pastoral activity among people who are already Christian, and even to the very act of living as a Christian, thus merging a specific activity in a more general one. It has been common since the council to say that the Roman Curia has exercised an influence opposed to the reforming intentions of the council and the pope. The fact is that the Curia, as the organ of papal government, has always been an organ effecting changes in the Church, and that all the transformations which have taken place and are taking place in Catholicism in the twentieth century have been brought about through using the Curia. The reform of the Holy Office, which signified and brought about the completely new post-conciliar mentality, bears the signature of Cardinal Ottaviani, its prefect, whom the innovators tend to regard as the incarnation of the preconciliar spirit. Indeed, as we saw in paragraph 69, disobedience to Roman norms achieved its end through successive ratification by the Curia, which abandoned its own positions and turned abuses into laws. Our subject here, however, is the change in the formal and technical workings of the Curia. First of all one should note the decline in the standard of curial Latin. If one goes back to the chiseled, adamantine style of Gregory XVI’s81 documents or the elegance of Leo XIII’s,82 one can see in comparison the loss of nobility, lucidity and precision in the curial style. The Latin of Vatican II was often deplored as miserable by the council fathers who nonetheless approved the content of the documents. Furthermore, some of the main texts, such as Gaudium et Spes, were originally drafted in French, thus breaking the canons of curial procedure, whereby the Latin text is meant to be original and authentic, and giving rise to the hermeneutical uncertainty we mentioned in paragraph 39. A notable instance of this uncertainty passing from the grammatical to the juridical field is the apostolic constitution of 3 April 1969. In its final paragraph we read: Ex his quae hactenus de novo Missali Romano exposuimus, quiddam nunc cogere et efficere placet.83 But the translations that were immediately put into circulation give the phrase this meaning: Nous voulons donner force de lot a tout ce que Nous avons expose84 and the Italian version: Vogliamo dare forza di legge a quanto abbiamo esposto,85 or: Quanto abbiamo qui stabilito e ordinato, vogliamo che rimanga valido ed efficace ora e in futuro.86 It is not our intention to enter a philological debate on this curial, or rather papal, text, but we should note how the clarity and rigor of the curial style have been lost in a passage as important as this. Declaring ourselves incompetent to decide the philological question, we will confine ourselves to noting what seems undeniable, that is that the bad or, in Cicero’s sense, “unused” Latin prevents one immediately seizing what the legislation means, and so opens the way to opposing readings: one which sees in the formula nothing more than a stylistic flourish (but in that case it is hard to see what “conclusion” the author is referring to, as the signature and date of the document follow immediately); and another which sees an intention to give the force of law to everything which has been set out (but in that case the problem is that quiddam is not at all the same as quid-quid, yet that is what the translations have assumed). A necessary consequence of the imprecision and uncertainty attending the whole business is the unpleasant fact that there are now three different official versions of the constitution, varying among themselves through additions and omissions. 81.
Pope from 1831 to 1846. [Translator’s note.] 74. Change in the Roman Curia, continued. Cultural inadequacies. Apart from bad Latin and a lack of precision, the Curia can be criticized for the cultural inadequacy implicit in recent papal documents, which were for centuries distinguished by an irreproachable perfection. We will give separate treatment to article 7 of the constitution Missale Romanum, which contained a definition of the Mass at odds with the Catholic understanding of it, stating that the Mass was a meeting, instead of a sacrificial act, with the result that the constitution had to be altered after a few months to get rid of its open departure from the teaching of the Church.87 We give now a few examples of defective knowledge, culpable negligence and lack of attention to detail, on the part of those who serve the pope, remembering that a pope’s official documents should never be allowed to damage his standing, particularly in matters of teaching or of special solemnity. In his speech on 2 August 1969 at Kampala in Black Africa, Paul VI praised the African Church of Tertullian, St. Cyprian and St. Augustine as if it had been a black church, when in fact it was entirely Latin. He also listed among the great men of the African church one “Octavius of Miletus,” who never existed but who, if he had, would not have been African. There was an Optatus of Milevis, but he was a writer of secondary importance and uncertain orthodoxy. Elsewhere, talking about unpredictable things which sometimes interrupt men’s plans, the Pope cited chapter seven of Machiavelli’s Prince, giving Valentine’s words saying that he “had thought of everything except the possibility that he would die suddenly.” But the unforeseen thing was not that he died (if it had been, how would he have been able to talk about it later?) but that he found himself at deaths door, when Alexander VI was dying, that is, when he would otherwise have been executing his plan to take over the state for himself.88 In another speech the Pope said that “the council decided to revive the word and the idea of collegiality” But the word is not used in any of the conciliar texts89 and although the Pope might well have inserted it in them at the time of their drafting, he could not thereafter make it be there when it was not. In his speech of 9 March 1972, he talks about the gift of freedom che Vuomo a Dio fa simigliante,90 but that is a slip because Dante is not there referring to freedom but to the order of the world which makes the creature like the Creator, inasmuch as that order is an impression upon the creation of an idea in the divine intellect. It is still stranger that this imprecision should extend even to quotations from Scripture. On 26 July 1970 the Pope quoted Galatians 5:6 as if it said that “faith makes charity operative” while St. Paul says the opposite, that is that charity makes faith operative, which was how the same passage was correctly translated in another speech of 3 August 1978. Without going into the general opposition between the Pope’s optimism and the actual state of the world and the Church, one can find particular statements that contradict the facts. In a speech of 27 November 1969 justifying the abandonment of Latin in the liturgy, the Pope said that Latin “remains in official documents and in ecclesiastical teaching.” But in almost all ecclesiastical universities and seminaries teaching is now given in the national language and at meetings of the Synod of Bishops the assembly breaks up, after the plenary opening session, into circuli minores91 corresponding to language groups. The Curia itself is now multilingual and I have among my papers a letter from Cardinal Wright, Prefect of the Congregation of the Clergy, headed (in English) “Congregation of the Clergy.” Apparently in the drawing up of this particular papal speech, some non-papal hand has transgressed the limits on the use of the word “remain.” No one should allow the respect that is owed to so venerable an organ of the papacy as the Roman Curia to be reduced in his own mind by the incubus of these lapses into imprecision. The truth of the matter is, nonetheless, that inadequacies among the Popes assistants are particularly embarrassing precisely because the seat of highest authority in the Church ought to be the one most immune from all reproach, and because the Pope in a sense personally incarnates the whole culture of the Catholic Church. Even if Pope Paul was not aware of the very real deficiencies of his assistants in drawing up documents, preparing speeches and looking up authors and quotations, he had nonetheless a very clear idea of the high standards required in those who work for a pope. In fact he said to Jean Guitton: La moindre inexactitude; le moindre lapsus dans la bouche d’un Pape ne peut se tolérer.92 The failings we have noticed do not perhaps show any profound cultural deficiencies, but they are indicative of a lack of diligence and precision which affect even the Pope himself A master craftsman cannot vouch for the excellence of all the work done by his subordinates, but the general quality of the assistants whom he employs necessarily reflects on his own powers of discernment. All the doings of an authority’s agents are doings of that authority, and either keep up or lower its prestige. There are still those who remember the commotion when a head of government quoted a saying of Protagoras in a very important speech, and attributed it to Anaxagoras. 87.
See paragraphs 273-4. 75. The Church’s renunciation in its relations with states. The renunciation of authority which we have explored within the Church, in the case of the reform of the Holy Office, is also apparent in relations with states, in the form of an agreement by the Church to join in the general process of international detente. The tendency is clearly there, but we will not go into any great detail in a subject which is not directly relevant to a book such as this and would involve our giving opinions on various famous events. We will, however, note the removal of Joseph Cardinal Mindszenty from the primatial see of Hungary, and the voluntary humiliation of the papal delegation at the installation of the representatives listened to the accusations directed at the Roman Church without any word or mark of protest. We note lastly the sympathy that Paul VI showed to the schismatical Catholic Church in China, which Pius XII had condemned into two encyclicals in 1956. We will deal at greater length with the more typical of the actions that show the renunciatory attitude the Church has adopted towards the modern state. The revision of the Italian concordat of 1929 is the most outstanding example of the change the Catholic Church has made in its philosophy and theology as far as relations between Church and State are concerned. The attack on first principles had already begun during the long process of negotiation, in an article in the Osservatore Romano of 3 December 1976 in which it was stated that the Church would condescend to sacrifice principles in order to demonstrate its own flexibility. The new agreement covered in fourteen articles matters to which the agreement of 1929 had devoted more than forty. This alone suggested that many mixed matters93 had been abandoned to the civil power, with the Church ceasing to have any say in them. There were three decisive changes. The first is laid down in article No. 1 of the additional protocol and reads as follows: “The principle, originally recognized in the Lateran Pacts, that the Catholic religion is the sole religion of the Italian state, is held to be no longer in force.”94 This provision of the new agreement implies the abandonment of the Catholic principle according to which man’s religious obligations go beyond the individual sphere and embrace the civil community: this should, as a community, have a positive concern for the ultimate destination of human society, which is a life transcending our present state. Acknowledging God is a social duty, not merely an individual one. Even if it were felt undesirable to attempt to uphold this principle from a theological point of view, given the nature of contemporary society, it might still have been upheld for historical reasons. That is, prescinding from the suprahistorical value that religion claims to have, it would still have been possible to recognize its value as an integral and important part of the historic life of the Italian nation, on the same basis as its language, art and culture. This is the thesis upheld by Paul VI95 when he said religion was a distinctive but not a divisive characteristic of civil society. It should also be said that with a greater degree of finesse in Vatican diplomacy, a way would have been found of giving less open expression to such a drastic concession, by which the Church accepted a divorce between social values and religious truth. It should have been possible to lay down not that the principle “is held to be no longer in force,” but that “the Holy See takes note that the Italian state declares it considers the principle to be no longer in force.” The substantial change here is obvious: the Church is today calling laicita96 what it yesterday described as laicismo97 and condemned as an illegitimately equal treatment of unequal views of life. Lastly, if the agreements signed on 12 February 1984 reshape the concordat of 1929, as everyone recognizes they do, they also attack the treaty regularizing the sovereignty and temporal independence of the papacy. The possibility of abandoning the concordat while leaving the treaty intact, which Mussolini had raised in a speech in parliament, was promptly excluded by Pius XI who said: simul stabunt aut simul cadent.98 I do not know how legitimate it is to abrogate a clause in one agreement without noting that in so doing one is abrogating a clause in another, but it is a fact (little noticed in speeches and in the press) that article 1 of the additional protocol signed on 18 February 1984 tacitly abrogates articles 1 and 2 of the treaty of1929 which specify that: “Italy recognizes and reaffirms the principle by which the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman religion is the sole religion of the state.” As a result, article 13 of the new concordat which says: “The foregoing arrangements constitute changes to the Lateran concordat” is false because of what it fails to say: they constitute a change to the treaty as well.99 93.
i.e., Matters in which both Church and state
might have a voice. [Translator’s note.] 76. The revision of the concordat, continued. The second change concerns the regulation of marriage. By the 1929 concordat, Italy recognized the civil effects of canonical marriages and decreed they should be recorded in the civil registry office. With the introduction of divorce,100 these arrangements had been unilaterally modified: the state withdrew from divorced persons the status of a spouse, which in the Church’s eyes they retained forever. Article 8 of the 1984 agreement continued to recognize the civil effects of a canonical marriage, but gave the state the right not to accord such recognition if the requirements of canon law did not conform in a particular case to the norms of civil law. The third change concerns education. Instead of the obligation to attend Catholic religious instruction at school, recognized by the 1929 concordat, article 9 of the new one states: “The Italian republic, recognizing the value of religious culture, and taking account of the fact that Catholic principles are part of the historic patrimony of the Italian people, will continue to ensure the teaching of the Catholic religion in schools. Each person is acknowledged to have the right of availing or not availing himself of such teaching.” This right of choice will be exercised by “students or their parents.” An obligatory system, tempered by the right to be dispensed from attending on the grounds of freedom of conscience, was thus replaced by an optional system by which instruction in the Catholic religion is left entirely up to the free choice of the individual. The Catholic religion is no longer part of the system of values recognized by Italian society, and that society is no longer bound by it; when recognized, values do impose an obligation. It is no longer the Catholic religion, as Catholic, that the state recognizes, but the Catholic religion inasmuch as it is an historically important form of religious expression. Here we have the notion that natural religion is the nucleus of all religions, giving them what value they have. This is, as we have often said, the fundamental principle of the modern age. Those negotiating on the part of the Holy See stuck to their accommodating and renunciatory line when it came to a vital point of educational policy. Requests for financial aid from the state for private schools, or for families who make use of them were not supported, and played no major role in the negotiation although Italian Catholics had staged many demonstrations in support of their right to such assistance, as a consequence of a pluralist approach to the matter, and had asked that Italy should make the same arrangements as many other democracies in Europe and in the world at large. The revision of the concordat gave rise to a good deal of dissimulation, intended to disguise the extent of the change by covering it with a fictitious historical continuity that could only be secured by changing the meaning of words and weakening the logical coherence of the Church’s thinking. Dispassionate observers recognized the extent of the change nonetheless. One such observer said: “The concordat is too different from the old one for its novelty to be called in question: it embarks on a new course of which the outcome cannot be foreseen.”101 The writer recalls the doctrine of Pius XI on the objective superiority of the goals pursued by the Church and concludes “it is clear how profoundly the Catholic Church has changed in recent years.” The thinking in the official Vatican journal of 19 February was altogether different; it maintained that “the new concordat is the solid and well-founded fruit of the agreements of 1929.” This statement would be true if words meant the opposite of what they do, and if changing one s principles were the same as developing them, getting them to bear fruit and “maintaining the concordat in its integrity.” The subsequent statement that “the principles of the Catholic religion remain intact” provokes the obvious distinction that they do indeed remain intact amidst error or persecution, but that they certainly do not remain intact in the law, morals or social life of a state that professes and practices their opposite. The Pope himself took part in this attempt to change reality by changing the meaning of words; this attempt to derive from forms of words a satisfaction which actual events did not afford. In his speech of 20 February he said: “The revision of the concordat is a sign of renewed harmony between state and Church in Italy.” But is not divorce out of harmony with indissolubility? Does not the Church believe that abortion violates the ban on killing which stems from natural moral law? Is not indifferentism in public schools regarding religious instruction at odds with the Catholics duty to inform himself about his own religion? The fact of the matter is that in the axiology of the Italian republic there is room for literacy, physical education, health, work, social security, the arts and letters, but the value which, according to Catholic doctrine, is the foundation and consummation of them all is left out and relegated to the private sphere guaranteed by individual liberty.102 Geno Pampaloni discusses the growing convergence between Church and state in Italy in an article called “The Narrowing of the Tiber”103 but he mistakenly considers it to be the result of “a weakening of secularity,” when it is in fact due to a draining of Catholicism of what makes it specifically Catholic: it is not the state that is bending to suit religion, but religion that is bending to suit the state, and thus, as it were, de-religionizing itself. Borrowing a term from the vocabulary of Italian politics, Pampaloni calls this a compromesso storico! At its broadest and deepest, however, it is nothing less than that104 R.I., 1984, p.246. fundamental shift which is preparing the ground for a humanitarian cosmopolis and a universal confusion of religions.105 100.
In 1970, and upheld at a referendum in 1974. [Translator’s
note.] 77. The Church of Paul VI. His speeches of September 1974. Pope Paul could not permanently maintain his natural disposition to disguise the difficulties the Church was experiencing, since it entailed a kind of forcing of his own mind, given the open admission of those difficulties which he often made, and which we mentioned in paragraph 7. These admissions reached their climax in two speeches of 11 and 18 September 1974, which astonished world opinion, were printed entire by the main journals of historical and political studies106 and were the object of much comment from the editor of the Osservatore Romano. The fact becoming apparent in both West and East is “the massive advance of a dechristianizing secularism.” Having recognized the theoretical and practical hostility of the modern world towards religion in general and Catholicism in particular, the Pope, overcome by a spiritual sadness, admits not only that it seems impossible for religion to flourish in such a world, but that, “to a superficial observer, the Church seems an impossible thing in our day, and even seems doomed to die out and be replaced by a simpler and more experimental, rational and scientific concepion of the world, without dogmas, without hierarchies, without limits to the possibilities of enjoying existence, without the Cross of Christ.” The Church remains a great institution “but let us open our eyes: it is today, in certain respects, experiencing great suffering, radical tension and corrosive contradictions’“ The Pope wonders whether the world still needs the Church to teach the values of charity, respect for rights, or solidarity, given that, “the world does all this, and it would seem, does it better’ and that its success in doing so seems to justify the abandonment of religious practice by whole peoples, the irreligiousness of secularism, emancipation from the moral law, the defection of priests and also of “the faithful who are no longer worried about being unfaithful.” In short the Pope puts forward the idea that Christianity is superfluous, and that the modern world could be emptied of all religion: one might call it the advent of “man the mini-god.” The Pope rightly sees an important element of the present crisis in the fact that the Church is trembling before the assault of forces internal to itself, not those outside. That is exactly the criterion we have adopted for discerning whether or not there has been a crisis in the Churchs history.107 “A great range of these evils do not assail the Church from without, but afflict it, weaken it and enervate it from within. The heart is filled with bitterness.” The novelty does not lie in evils arising from among the clergy; evils have often come from that source in the past. The Pope is well aware that the new element is what he called selfdemolition in his famous speech at the Lombard College. That expression is inadmissible dogmatically, and in fact was never used again by the Pope, because the Church is essentially constructive rather than destructive; but when understood historically, it is appropriate. When approaching the question of the solution to this crisis, if the Pope were to remain in the realm of facts and of reasonable conjectures based upon them, he would find himself in a cleft stick. So, in his conclusion he moves from the historical level, on which the Church is experiencing suffering and decline, to the level of faith, on which the believer’s spirit is sustained by a divine promise that non praevalebunt.108This movement to the so-called argument based on faith has become common in Catholic apologetics since the council. It is doubtful whether it is a logical transition to make. The diagnosis he has already given, identifying the worlds sickness as stemming from alienation from God, desacralization and a complete Diesseitigkeit, is itself an argument based on faith. Only faith sees a ruin in what looks to the unbeliever like the perfecting and progress of the human race. 106.
R.I., 1974,p.932. 78. Paul VI’s unrealistic moments. There are two ways in which Paul VI overcomes the sadness caused by contemplating the present state of the Church. The legitimate and only true and traditional way is to admit that facts are as they are, and then to examine them in the light of a genuinely Catholic philosophical and theological analysis. The illegitimate way is a product of the old psychological habit of believing things are the way you want them to be, which leads to the mind’s refusing to recognize what it does really know, because it would be unpleasant to do so. The mind then senses the way things are through its contact with reality, but does not admit the state of affairs to itself or to others. Examples of this phenomenon abound in the writings of moral philosophers and biblical prophets, to whom the people cried loquimini nobis placentia,109which is, at times, what each individual says to himself as well. Perhaps some words in a letter Montini wrote as a young man show the first signs of this predominance of imagination over the perception of facts: “I am convinced that one of my thoughts, a thought from my own soul, is worth more to me than anything in the world.” Only those who are unaware of what Augustine called the latebrae110and Manzoni the guazzabugllo111 of the human heart, including the heart of a pope, will be surprised to find side by side in the same speech by Paul VI a sadness justified by reality, and a triumphalism which shrouds or transforms or even reverses the reality of a situation. In his speech of 16 November 1970, for example, the Pope had vividly depicted the unhappy state of the post-conciliar Church. Externally there was “an oppressive legal system in so many countries” which bound the Church: it “suffers and struggles as far as it can and survives because God helps it.” Internally “it is for everyone a cause of surprise, pain and scandal to see that within the Church itself there arise disturbances and unfaithfulness, often on the part of those who ought to be most loyal and exemplary because of the commitments they have made and the graces they have received.” He also mentions “doctrinal aberrations,” “a casting aside of the authority of the Church,” a general moral license, a “lack of concern for discipline” among the clergy. But then, despite this grave state of affairs which he has just described so articulately, the Pope goes on to see something positive in the situation, even to see “marvelous signs of vitality, spirituality and sanctity.” He can only see them vaguely, and only vaguely say what they are, since he is carried away by his imagination. Even in the heart of the doctrinal errors he had so energetically condemned in the encyclical Mysterium Fidei, the Pope detects some reason for satisfaction, because in the very heresies denying the real presence he can see “a praiseworthy desire to examine this great mystery and explore its inexhaustible riches.” His tendency not to quench the smoldering wick here lapses into approving attempts to diminish and dissolve a mystery. In other addresses too his tendency to lapse into unreality led Pope Paul to mistake the products of his own imagining for the reality of the world around. By a sort of general synecdoche, some minute and irrelevant part of the whole is endowed with an imaginary exponential power and projected onto a grand scale so as to be proof of a general trend. As Arnobius says, it is like denying a mountain is made of earth because there is a nugget of gold buried in it, or denying that a decayed and suffering man is sick, because he has a healthy fingernail. Perhaps the greatest example of this gratissimus error112 is Pope Pauls speech on the twelfth anniversary of his coronation, reported on 23 June 1975. Having said that “Vatican II has indeed begun a new era in the life of the Church in our time” he praises “the vast harmony of the whole Church with its supreme pastor and its bishops”; this being said at a time when almost all the episcopates of the world were sitting in judgment on papal encyclicals and putting forward teachings of their own. This is said after the Katholikentag at Essen had done the things we mentioned in paragraph 62. Three weeks later the Pope was struck by a fit of forgetfulness regarding this “vast harmony” when he said: “Enough of internal dissent within the Church! Enough of a disintegrating interpretation of pluralism! Enough of Catholics attacking each other at the price of their own necessary unity!”113 Similarly, to say that “the council has made us understand the vertical dimension of life” presupposes that the pre-conciliar Church was turned toward the world rather than towards heaven, and thus contradicts the principal and professed aim of the council right from its beginning, which was to adjust the direction of Catholicism by reconciling it to recent historical developments, insofar as any adjustment was to be made at all. The Pope says further that “the fruits of the liturgical reform today appear in their splendor’; but a few weeks previously Rheims cathedral had, with the approval of its bishop, been so profaned that people had asked for it to be reconsecrated; arbitrarily altered liturgies were multiplying without limit in France, illegal eucharistic prayers by the hundred were circulating in defiance of Roman decrees, and the Missa cum pueris114 was provoking strong complaints throughout the Catholic world. In conclusion, the Pope declared in a sweeping statement, that would hardly have been justified even in periods of genuine spiritual unity, that “the teachings of the council have entered into daily life and have become the staple food of Christian life and thought.” If by Christian life the Pope means those small circles into which it had already retreated, anticipating the forecast he was to make the following year115 and abandoning the main bulk of society, then his assertion is valid, as one would expect it to be.116 If, on the other hand, the Popes analysis is meant to apply to the whole world and the whole contemporary Church, then his words are altogether at odds with the decline in morals, the urban violence that is turning cities into jungles,117 the adoption of atheist constitutions (which are a very recent phenomenon in human history), the cynical disregard of international law, and with the spread of divorce, abortion and euthanasia. There is in this anniversary speech a lack of critical thinking that veils historical realities and sometimes reverses them by dismissing the dark background of the picture as merely a few shadows. This one-eyed view of the situation is taken up by the official journal of the Holy See which, being unable to ignore realities entirely, makes a distinction between “fundamental health” and visible appearances.118 If such a distinction were legitimate, any judgment about the state of the Church would become an esoteric operation that common sense, whether in the Church or in the world, would be incapable of performing. This, however, is not the case, because even though it is true that the most important element in the Church is an invisible principle that works in the depths of consciences to produce acts which in themselves are invisible, it is also true that that invisible element exists in history and appears in the deeds it produces. Insofar as it exists in the visible world, the Church is an earthly reality like the Kingdom of France, as Bellarmine119 said. I will not go so far as to apply to the contemporary Church Tacituss words about the decaying Roman world, namely that corrumpere et corrumpi saeculum vocatur120 but nor will I be like the biblical antelopes that maintained their confidence, and deliberately ignored the fact that they were captured, until the very moment they fell into the nets.121 109.
“Tell us what we want to hear.”
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