Fr. John Zuhlsdorf, striking a diplomatic pose, writes in the above-linked post:
Yes, this is an exageration, but there is a grain of truth in it, no?
A while back I read a comment that if some members of the SSPX have turned Vatican II into a “Super Heresy”, some liberals have turned it into a “Super Dogma”.
We need to read every Council in the light of the others, but especially Vatican II in light of those that went before. Vatican II cannot be properly read apart from the other Councils and the Church’s Magisterium
We need a hermeneutic of continuity and not a hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture – in either direction.
As my old pastor used to say, you can go into the ditch on either side of the road.
Those who make it a "super dogma" do so on the basis of inspiration of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is their trump card. During the days of the council, and in the years immediately following, council participants were preening and posing in front of media mirrors over the sheer brilliance of what they had done, and constantly invoked the Holy Spirit as their guarantor.
ReplyDeleteIs that true? Is it really that simple? Are their claims unassailable? What does that indicate about such as Ab Lefebvre?
These are the questions that Church leaders have to make up their minds about -- not just for this pope's reign, or until a pope with a contrary mind ascends to the office, but for all time. If the next pope is a flaming protege of Giacomo Lercaro, for example, can he undo what his predecessor now seems about to do? Can he, on the pretexts of "unity" and "discipline," undo the Motu Proprio, either directly or by means of subterfuge? The answer would seem to be, "of course."
It has certainly happened before. It has long been argued, for example, that "Quo Primum does not bind any of the successors of St Peter, for no pope has an authority higher than that of another pope." To accept this statement requires that "Quod Primum" be accepted as merely a disciplinary matter. If THAT is the case, then the Holy Spirit cannot and ought not be claimed as the guarantor.
Did Pius V consider the Holy Spirit a guarantor of the truths in "Quo Primum"? If he did (which seems likely to me). was he wrong to do so? Are there absolutely no doctrinal implications to "Quod Primum"? "Discipline," after all, is only a word. Its nature as such is to be inflated and deflated like Oprah Winfrey's stomach. Doctrine certainly can be thought of as disciplinary in effect.
It suggests to me that there might well be an expiration date on Benedict's promises to the SSPX, perhaps conterminous with his own. Similarly, it suggests that the doctrinal impulses issuing from the great "pastoral" media event of the sixties have a similar expiration date, which, Holy Spirit willing, will one day be upon us.