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April 5, 2016 Church

A Comment on Ignoring Amoris Laetitia

During an off-the-cuff chitchat with a young evangelical in a coffee shop in Grand Rapids, the question of conversion arose and I asked why he, a student clearly interested in ecclesiastical history and medieval theology, had not converted to Catholicism. His reply: It’s too much like Episcopalianism now. My unconfirmed suspicion is that this gent will be on his way to second (or third) Rome sooner or later, just as many Protestants of all ages have tried to find solace in the arms of Orthodoxy. It doesn’t always work, but few things ever do. I can’t blame would-be Protestant converts for finding very little which is satisfying about contemporary Catholicism, what with the doctrinal confusion, disciplinary chaos, and overarching unseriousness which infects the Mystical Body of Christ. I was fruitless in my efforts to convince this aforementioned young man that Pope Francis hadn’t already revamped Catholic teaching on marriage, the family, and sexuality or that there is no dogmatic basis within Catholicism for the conclusion that any pope can simply change settled doctrine on a whim. Even if that were so, he opined, it didn’t change the reality that Francis has de facto altered the doctrinal course of the Church and that the “intellectual arguments” of theologians, canonists, and mere layfolk mean very little for how the Church functions “on the ground.” He’s right of course, and so I opted to say my goodbyes and go about my merry business.

The easiest way to deal with the present crisis in the Church is to ignore it, or so I’ve been told. I know several people who have no interest whatsoever in reading — or reading about — Amoris Laetitia, Pope Francis’s pending post-synodal exhortation which will be released Friday. At 200 ponderous pages, I don’t blame them. The odds are high that the document will be so circuitous and convoluted as to be susceptible to any number of conflicting interpretations. Only the traditionalists are likely to cry foul over its contents, though conservatives will likely be pressed to express some discomfort with certain paragraphs. No one expects it to be a revolutionary document, not even the liberals. The most they can hope for at this point is that the exhortation contains enough backdoors and passageways to allow them — in conjunction with local episcopal conferences — to do an end-run around doctrine in the name of “the pastoral.” And what happens when that goes down? Will there be a schism? Will the faithful rise up in defense of the Faith? Or will things just proceed along as they largely have for the last 50 years, with the last remnants of the pre-conciliar Church continuing to crumble while some angry voices murmur in the corner? What a magnificent catastrophe.

The SSPX Regularization Saga Continues

Catholic outlets, mainstream news, and, of course, one notorious traditionalist web-log are all reporting that Bishop Bernard Fellay, Superior General of the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), met with Pope Francis on Friday. Rumors have been swirling for months that Francis would unilaterally regularize the Society without requesting the SSPX to sign-on to compromising doctrinal statement. Many will recall the collapse of the Vatican/SSPX talks in 2012 was largely over a so-called “Doctrinal Preamble,” which, inter alia, demanded the Society recognize the liceity of the Novus Ordo Missae and no longer openly dissent from certain problematic elements (by Society lights) contained in the documents of the Second Vatican Council (e.g., religious liberty, ecumenism, and collegiality). Since that time, Bishop Fellay has gone into extensive detail on the ups-and-downs of his dealings with the Roman authorities and the contradictions he was forced to face at that time. Unfortunately, some in the Society, including the now-expelled Bishop Richard Williamson, took the Vatican/SSPX talks as an excuse to both denounce Bishop Fellay’s leadership of the Society and to fire-up their own “Resistance” movement which, at this point, is practically sedevacantist in nature. What, I wonder, will happen this time should Francis move ahead with regularization?

For those aware of recent Eastern Orthodox history, a parallel scenario played itself out in 2007 when the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR) reconciled with the Moscow Patriarchate (MP) after more than eight decades of estrangement. While ROCOR began as a continuation of the MP with the express desire to keep Russian Orthodoxy alive during a period of Soviet domination in the Russian homeland, decades of separation from not just the MP but large swathes of world Orthodoxy began to take their toll as clerics and layfolk alike began to see ROCOR as the “only true” part of the Orthodox Church left. Granted, ROCOR wisely expelled some of these voices from its ranks while making small strides on the ground to patch things up with other local Orthodox churches, but by the turn of the millennium stronger strides had to be taken. Under the courageous leadership of the late Metropolitan Laurus, ROCOR proceeded rapidly down the path of full unity with Moscow and, by extension, the whole Orthodox Church. Some in ROCOR, including a number of priests and bishops, objected to the plan and broke off into their own “Resistance” or “True Orthodox” sects, none of which have experienced significant growth on their own or borne much in the way of good fruit. As for ROCOR, none of the doomsday predictions came true. It still continues on as a conservative voice in world Orthodoxy, opening up new parishes and monasteries in the West while building closer ties with other Orthodox jurisdictions.

Now, some may point out that Orthodoxy is not Catholicism and that the crisis in the Catholic Church dwarfs the problems embedded in the MP (problems which have not fully abated in the decade since ROCOR reconciled with its mother church). However, this is no clear evidence to show that SSPX regularization will spell the downfall of the Society or lead to any sort of compromise. If anything, it will make the Society’s position in the Church stronger insofar as traditional and non-traditional Catholics who, for various reasons, feel uncomfortable drawing too close to the SSPX while it remains in an inrregular canonical position can comfortably rethink that position. Moreover, priests and bishops of the SSPX will no doubt have a greater opportunity to participate in mainstream Catholic discussions on matters of discipline and doctrine while ministering to a larger flock in need of Catholic truth. These possibilities are a cause for celebration, not fear mongering and worry. Still, some will no doubt reject all forms of regularization, preferring to hold to the idea of the SSPX being their Petite Église where only the most “hardcore” and “steadfast” are welcome. And what will come of that mentality? More splinter groups with a tiny audience, no core internal discipline, and little in the way of obedience, either to the lawful authorities appointed by Rome or the transit ones they erect for themselves.

April 1, 2016 Church

Longenecker’s Insincerity

A few weeks ago I posted a critique of Fr. Dwight Longenecker’s article on “Catholic fundamamentalism” which, in truth, was little more than a thinly disguised attack on traditional Catholics. You can read that post here. Since that time, Christopher Ferrara — longtime contributor to The Remnant and licensed attorney — dispatched a letter to Longenecker seeking a retraction of any statement from his piece on “Catholic fundamentalism” which implied that the editorial and writing staff of The Remnant — particularly its lead editor Michael Matt — are prone towards violence. Longenecker complied . . . sort of. Here, archived at The Remnant, is Longenecker’s original retraction, which was posted on March 31, 2016:

March 30, 2016 Church, Eastern Orthodox Church, Roman Catholic Church, Theology

A Tale of Two Marks

Neo-Orthodox around the blogosphere and social media outlets have been offering up glowing praise for Moscow Patriarch Kirill’s recent Sunday of Orthodoxy homily. (For those unaware, the Sunday of Orthodoxy commemorates the Church’s triumph over Iconoclasm and is celebrated on the first Sunday of Great Lent.) The homily, which can be viewed over at the Byzantine Texas blog here, denounces “false union” with the Catholic Church while upholding Mark of Ephesus as a true champion of Orthodoxy. No doubt Kirill’s words were inspired in part by intra-Orthodox panic over his recent meeting with Pope Francis and the upcoming discussion of ecumenism which will be held at the Great and Holy Council this summer. According to the neo-Orthodox, Mark of Ephesus is a hero for his alleged anti-Latin stance and refusal to cave to “Latin innovations.” Mark, so the story goes, wanted nothing to do with the corrupt, heterodox Latin Church nor did he hold the Petrine Office in any particular esteem. While few neo-Orthodox have ever read a single word penned by Mark, almost all of them are 100% sure of what Mark stood for and why.

Complicating — or, rather, overturning — this simplistic and ahistorical image of Mark is Fr. Christiaan Kappes, professor at Ss. Cyril and Methodius Byzantine Seminary in Pennsylvania. Kappes latest effort to clarify Mark’s thinking for contemporary audiences, “Mark of Ephesus, The Council of Florence, and the Roman Papacy,” is included in the new SVS Press anthology, Primacy in the Church, and available online for free here. While Kappes stresses that Mark of Ephesus would have serious qualms about the nature of the present-day papacy and the over-centralization of ecclesiastical governance, Mark’s ecclesiology is hardly anti-papal. Moreover, as some of Kappes’s other studies on Mark make clear, the saintly bishop of Ephesus displayed a great deal of charity and respect toward the Latins during the tense debates at the Council of Florence, far more than many Orthodox feel compelled to offer toward their separated brethren today.

March 30, 2016 Church, Roman Catholic Church

Medaille Takes on The Remnant

John Medaille, distributist darling and armchair theologian extraordinaire, has parted company with the familiar terrain of Catholic social teaching in order to embroil himself in an ecclesiastical spat over at Ethika Politika, this time with the long-running traditionalist newspaper The Remnant. Medaille is incensed that the publication ran a piece by former First Things blogger Ann Barnhardt calling for the bishops to rise up and depose Pope Francis. At the heart of Medaille’s objections is his belief that Barnhardt’s is essentially crypto-Protestant since it relies on a “private judgment” about the Petrine office and Francis’s performance on the throne. That is a typical charge made against traditionalists who choose to speak out about the crisis in the Church. The dominant thinking among (neo-Catholic?) apologists for both the Pope and contemporary Church governance is that unless there is an official proclamation from the Vatican that there’s a crisis, then there is no crisis. If Pope Francis does not come forth and declare himself to heterodox, scandalizing, or personally unfit for the papacy, then no Catholic may form the opinion, rooted in reason, that Francis is heterodox, scandalizing, or personally unfit for the papacy. This is fideism parading as loyalty, and it’s a point of view often advanced by those with a vested interest in seeing Francis “revolutionize” the Church.

With that noted, there are other aspects of Medaille’s article that ought to raise some eyebrows. First, Medaille misleadingly subtitles his attack “The Remnant‘s call for Schism” even though Barnhardt’s piece does nothing of the sort. Moreover, Medaille should have directed his ire toward Bernhardt, not The Remnant. While that publication is certainly editorially responsible for the articles it chooses to run, there’s no indication that the newspaper’s entire editorial and writing staff endorses Barnhardt’s admittedly extreme views. Would it be fair to run a post declaring “Ethika Politika Denies the Physical Resurrection of Christ” if, for example, Medaille were to publish such an atrocious assertion under his own name? Of course not. Medaille’s views are his own, as are Barnhardt’s. To try and smear an entire publication simply because one disagrees with a particular piece that ran in it not only smacks of cheap sensationalism, but demonstrates a gross lack of charity and prudence as well.

Second, Medaille’s apparent agnosticism with regard to orthodoxy is disturbing. Following the logic set forth in the article, no individual has the competence to judge either the bishops or the pope regardless of what they do or say. It seems that Medaille believes that the faithful should tie a rubber hose around reason and shoot up on complacency. What a novel turn of events that would be. If 2,000 years of Church history testifies to anything it is the need for faithful bishops, priests, and laity to rise up and defend orthodoxy during those unfortunate periods when the Church’s leadership jumps the rails of truth. The situation is not pretty. It can even be unsettling, but where would we be if mighty saints like Athanasius and Maximus had not spoken out against heresy? How long would the tragic period of Iconoclasm lasted in the East had it not been for the tireless witness of the faithful, even unto the shedding of their blood? While reasonable persons can disagree whether or not the Church has entered such a sorrowful period again, that is not what Medaille is up to. Instead he wishes to close-off discussion of the Church’s present situation out of what seems to be a distorted sense of fealty to the powers that be.

Last, it is ironic that Medaille of all people should choose to wag his finger at Barnhardt and The Remnant for sniffing out problems in the Church. Medaille has made something of a career out of going after churchmen who deviate from Catholic social teaching, particularly those papal encyclicals which focus on things economic. Why does Medaille get a free pass to call fellow Catholics on the carpet over the Church’s magisterium but The Remnant does not? Perhaps Medaille can offer up an explanation in a future article, or maybe — hopefully — he will go back to penning pieces on what he knows and stay out of these sorts of fisticuffs.

March 25, 2016 Church

Deus Crucifixus

The-Taking-down-from-the-Cross

The purpose of Christianity is not to help people by reconciling them with death but to reveal the Truth about life and death in order that people may be saved by this Truth. … Christianity is not reconciliation with death. It is the revelation of death, and it reveals death because it is the revelation of Life. Christ is this Life. And only if Christ is Life is death what Christianity proclaims it to be, namely the enemy to be destroyed, and not a ‘mystery’ to be explained. Religion and secularism, by explaining death, give it a ‘status,’ a rationale, make it ‘normal.’ Only Christianity proclaims it to be abnormal and, therefore, truly horrible. At the grave of Lazarus Christ wept, and when His own hour to die approached, ‘he began to be sore amazed and very heavy.’ In the light of Christ, this world, this life are lost and beyond mere ‘help,’ not because there is fear of death in them, but because they have accepted and normalized death. To accept God’s world as a cosmic cemetery which is to be abolished and replaced by an ‘other world’ which looks like a cemetery (‘eternal rest’) and to call this religion, to live in a cosmic cemetery and to ‘dispose’ every day of thousands of corpses and to get excited about a ‘just society’ and to be happy! – this is the fall of man. It is not the immorality or the crimes of man that reveal him as a fallen being; it is his ‘positive idea’ – religious or secular – and his satisfaction with this ideal. This fall, however, can be truly revealed only by Christ, because only in Christ is the fullness of life revealed to us, and death, therefore, becomes ‘awful,’ the very fall from life, the enemy. It is this world (and not any ‘other world’), it is this life (and not some ‘other life’) that were given to man to be a sacrament of the divine presence, given as communion with God, and it is only through this world, this life, by ‘transforming’ them into communion with God that man was to be. The horror of death is, therefore, not in its being the ‘end’ and not in physical destruction. By being separation from the world and life, it is separation from God. The dead cannot glorify God. It is, in other words, when Christ reveals Life to us that we can hear the Christian message about death as the enemy of God. It is when Life weeps at the grave of the friend, when it contemplates the horror of death, that the victory over death begins.

– Fr. Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World (H/T Fr. Ted’s Blog)

March 24, 2016 Church, Eastern Catholicism, Roman Catholic Church

For the Western Triduum

Like many I have been eyeing the rumors that Pope Francis’s completed (but yet released) post-synodal exhortation will open the doors for “integrating” those in “irregular situations” back into the Catholic Church. No one expects the doors to be flung open, just cracked a bit. Even if that proves true, however, the chances are high that hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Catholics living openly in various states of mortal sin will feel emboldened, and perhaps even encouraged, to participate in the sacramental life of the Church without repenting, amending their ill ways of life, and trying—like all of us—to sin no more.

Two years ago I found myself in a mild panic over what the first “Extraordinary Synod on the Family” might lead to. Following that sorrowful event, I felt convinced that the time had come for all Catholics of good will (traditional, conservative, whatever) to set aside their sometimes acrimonious differences in order to struggle for the good of Holy Mother Church and the upholding of her indefectible teachings on marriage, the family, and human sexuality. In an October 2014 post, “A Step Toward Disarmament,” I swore off using the polemical neologism “neo-Catholic” on Opus Publicum and hoped traditional Catholics might fully suit. Not surprisingly, that didn’t happen. A brief perusal of almost all high-profile traditional Catholic websites and blogs indicates that things are as bad ever as far as Catholic internecine strife is concerned. According to traditionalists, “neo-Catholics” are naïve, ill-informed, blind, dangerous, etc. because they continue to deny that the Church is in a state of crisis—a crisis exacerbated by the words and actions of Pope Francis. “Neo-Catholics” or, rather, contemporary conservative Catholics by and large believe that while the Church is facing serious troubles, traditionalist rhetoric, with its lack of charity and open hostility toward the Holy Father, is neither helpful nor accurate. Traditional Catholics are the “Chicken Littles” of the Church and their hyperbolic declarations need not concern a single serious soul.

While I too often find myself cringing at the vitriol pouring out of publications like The Remnant and One Peter Five, I can’t help but disagree with their overarching point—one often made by the leadership of the Society of St. Pius X—that the Mystical Body of Christ is undergoing its Passion and that like the Apostles themselves, we do not know what to make of it. How can it be that the Church should suffer so? Did not our Lord Jesus Christ promise that the gates of hell would not prevail? And yet if you look sobermindedly at the Church today, it is impossible to deny that the devil has crept aboard the Barque of St. Peter and is misleading it through a storm right into the rocks.

Some will say that the Church has always had trials, and this is true. The Arian Crisis, Iconoclasm, the Great Schism, the Reformation, and so on and so forth have presented great challenges to the life and integrity of the Church and yet in the end the Church prevailed. By faith all Catholics believe that the Church will prevail this time as well, but it is so incredibly difficult to see how. Traditional Catholics are right to remind all that demons are only driven out through prayer, repentance, and fasting, but they could stand to be reminded now and again that faith, hope, and charity rather than scorn, mockery, and derision are essential as well. With respect to conservative Catholics as a whole, I sympathize deeply with their desire to remain truly hopeful for the future and to work for the preservation of the Faith in the face of innumerable intellectual, historical, and political challenges, but there comes a point when it is necessary to call a spade a spade or, in this instance, a crisis a crisis and to fight—truly fight—against Christ’s enemies, no matter what guise they may appear in.

I occasionally wonder if Eastern Catholics feel the crisis in the Church as acutely as Latins do. Given that so many have fought, suffered, and died for the Faith for centuries, it is entirely possible that the present Eastern ecclesiastical consciousness is now hardened against the understandable fears and worries which plague many in the Church today. The Catholics of the Middle East haven’t the time to squabble over budgets, carnivals, and The Vatican II Hymnal. Their churches are not oriented around bourgeois values and petty pious posturing; they are literally built on the blood of martyrs. The Greek Catholic churches, many of which were nearly wiped out during the last century, produced some of the most outspoken voices for the Truth of Christ at last year’s painful installment of the “Extaordinary Synod.” Latin Catholics sometimes lament that they have been left without shepherds, but there are icons of the Faith in the East to be found to this day, lay and clerical alike. By their example—and by the prayers of their martyrs—the Church Universal can and will be saved.

March 15, 2016 Church

A Brief Observation

A small uproar can be heard from conservative Catholic circles over Notre Dame University’s decision to honor Vice-President (and pro-abortionist politician) Joe Biden. But an uproar is all it is, and soon it shall pass just as all of the other uproars common in American Catholicism when some figure or wing of the Church shakes hands with evil. Nothing ever comes of it though, just as nothing usually comes from any disciplinary or doctrinal affront occurring within the walls of the Church. (Child sexual abuse and gross financial misdealings are the notable exceptions here.) People, even clerics, get indignant, but then life goes on. Despite this, Catholics continue to insist to their estranged Orthodox and (even more estranged) Protestant brethren that one of the “selling points” of the Catholic Church is its clear, unambiguous rules which, allegedly, forestall doctrinal and disciplinary anarchy. Such claims are utterly implausible at this stage in the game. While I cannot speak for the various Protestant sects, it is unimaginable that the various Orthodox churches in either the United States or abroad would allow church-backed institutions to openly support immoral politicians and/or policies. This isn’t to say it never happens or that there aren’t pockets of exceptions in Orthodox-dom, but it is hardly commonplace.

I make mention of this for two reasons. First, Catholic triumphalism over the Orthodox in the realm of discipline and doctrine simply needs to stop. Second, and more importantly, there is a discussion which needs to be had concerning the particular virtues of decentralization when it comes to taking meaningful action against those who openly dissent from Church teaching. Many fear that decentralization in the Roman Church will lead to chaos . . . but is not the chaos already here? Contrary to the magic longings of certain conservatives and traditionalists, the Vatican is not going to swoop in and save the day. If subsidiarity still means anything, then perhaps it is time to get jettison the Latin fetish for hyper-centralization and top-down, command-plan ecclesial politics. Or maybe people just enjoy complaining.

March 14, 2016 Church, Uncategorized

The Case for Papalotry?

Daniel Schwindt, writing over at The Distributist Review, offers up what he calls “The Case for Popery.” Although Schwindt is normally on his game when it comes to Catholic (social) teaching, this is not his best effort. Consider, for instance, these paragraphs:

Although most Catholics will readily claim “faithfulness” to the Church, in practice this tends to look a lot like the Protestant obedience to Scripture. It begins in good intentions and ends in arbitrariness, and the individual just winds up being obedient to himself alone.

Enter, the Pope.

The office of the pope—the Chair of Peter—was instituted to prevent precisely this sort of descent into abstraction and arbitrariness. Christ knew humanity, and in his supreme wisdom he left behind, not a book or an abstraction, but an Apostle. An Apostle named Peter. And he left him with instructions and a set of keys. The papacy provides the Church with an actual point of reference—a living, breathing, center of gravity within time and place.

Whether intended or not, this type of maximalist rhetoric is deeply insulting to Eastern Catholics everywhere, none of whom recognize the pope as their patriarch nor belong to his rite. Acknowledging in full the pope’s supreme jurisdiction over the Church does not mean following on every word and action he undertakes, particularly if his words and actions are ever contra fide. This is not true just for Eastern Catholics; it is true for Latins as well. 2,000 years of Church history has witnessed scoundrels, rogues, and — yes — even a heretic or two sitting on the papal throne; should these men be considered “point[s] of reference” for the faithful as well? And what of the college of bishops? What are they worth in Schwindt’s papal-centric scheme? Did Christ not have 12 Apostles? Is the Church not more than one man’s successor?