Roberto De Mattei, "The Roots and Historical Consequences of Modernism"

Roberto De Mattei, "The Roots and Historical Consequences of Modernism," translated by Giuseppe Pellegrino (1P5, June 23, 2018). Pellegrino writes:

Roberto de Mattei’s paper, presented today in Rome, is entitled “The roots and historical consequences of Modernism”. It provides a detailed study of the origin of the present theological confusion in the Church in the ideas embraced at the time of the so-called “Modernist crisis” of the early 20th century. The teaching of Maurice Blondel that experience is the criteria of truth spread to influential theologians such as Alfred Loisy, George Tyrrell, and Ernesto Buonaiuti, who all affirmed in various ways that truth is not immutable, rather it evolves as man evolves. These writers in turn influenced Teilhard de Chardin, Henri de Lubac, and Karl Rahner, all of whom were extremely influential on the work and teaching of the Second Vatican Council. This “Neo-Modernism” subtly tried to influence the Church without revealing its agenda of dismantling the philosophical foundation of the immutable nature of Truth and the theological foundation of the unchanging character of Divine Revelation. Through a “revolution of language,” one of the key principles of Marxism, those who seek to foment revolution in the Church have used words such as “renewal,” “aggiornamento,” and “accompaniment” to radically change the Church’s praxis, falsely setting up a separation between doctrine and praxis. The writings and statements of contemporary churchmen such as Walter Kasper, Bruno Forte, and Jorge Bergoglio are imbued with this same thinking. Bergoglio is clearly a disciple of Blondel. The only effective way to combat the present culmination of the “Modernist crisis” is to embrace the immutable Tradition of the Church.

Even this supporter of Teilhard de Chardin finds Massimo Faggioli's and James Martin's effort to rehabilitate him "weird"

Read especially the last parts of Mark Lambert's "I may surprise you with a defence of Teilhard de Chardin" (November 23, 2017).

... his reputation as a bit of a rebel means that an approval of a proposal asking for Pope Francis to remove the monitum has almost inevitably, drawn support from Pope Francis merry band of theological nitwits & cheering boys. The fact that such people as Fr. James Martin and Massimo Faggioli are cheering for the petition to remove the monitum (warning) against the writings of Teilhard... well... it speaks volumes, doesn't it?

Ii could easily be argued that the central error of our times is evolutionism taken as a paradigm for the whole of reality, including God, revelation, tradition, and morality. As Father Z puts it, if Teilhard's writings were ambiguous and seriously erroneous when the monitum was imposed, then surely they still are? ...

... I can't help but be disappointed by this constant desire to forego the practice and common sense of the past and re-write everything in the ink of modern secularism. Isn't this glib jostling for attention intellectually drab and dishonest?

Yes I defend Teilhard de Chardin's extravagant and audacious writings. I love them! As a scientist he wanted a free-ranging, peer review of his work. His ideas should be challenged, but not demonised. But I don't mistake them for the teaching of my Church, and I don't regret or seek to revoke the very valid monitum placed on them in 1962. Fr Teilhard de Chardin accepted the Holy See's censure, & he would have accepted the monitum as a just act by the teaching authority of the Church, just as he accepted the censure of his superior in 1925. The fact that Faggioli and Martin are seeking to rehabilitate him somehow is weird (given he is pretty much old hat these days), and strikes me as just another anti-orthodoxy bandwagon for them to jump on.

[Hat tip to J.M.]

Truth Decay

Yet another angst-ridden message from our underground correspondent, Guy Noir - Private Eye, this time arriving by bicycle courier in a large envelope. The hand-written message, with splotches of ink, made me wonder if Guy had used a quill pen to compose the missive. In the envelope I also found a pack of four Havana cigars. Nice.

Guy's message referenced a piece by Sandro Magister entitled "World's End Update ..." (Settimo Cielo, October 20, 2017), which I tracked down on the internet. Then followed his brief comments:

It's getting old. This new universalism has by now been so often suggested and homaged by so many recent popes that one could honestly argue it's part of the postconciliar development of doctrine. I no longer know what to say. Ralph Martin's "Who Will Be Saved?" offered a complete, Catholic, and biblical response to it. Trouble being, though, as Bishop Barron pointed out in his online debate over Martin's corrective, the conservatives' ballyhoooed Benedict XVI himself seems to support some sort of universalism in his encyclical on hope. We can laud tradition all we want, but at some point have to admit that postconciliarism is often an apology for, versus a friend of, Tradition. When the Four Last Things are shined up with new porcelain theological caps after receiving a Balthasarian root canal, Developmentalism is becoming the new orthodoxy, no matter how hard the forced smile from places like First Things. We are all Mormons now.

So it goes ...

"Entschuldigen Sie While I Barf"

Frank J. Sheed, "Entschuldigen Sie While I Barf" (October 32, 2018):

In Rome, Pope Francis is in the news again for his implicit endorsements of Universalism. Nothing new here, really, but it is a depressing reminder of what I will call The German Captivity of the Church. And I am not talking about Luther. For decades now modernist theology has captivated the theologians and leaders of both mainline Protestantism and, apparently, Catholicism. You see the same pattern in Evangelicalism, too, where the theology of Karl Barth has been the pet affection of those raised in but chaffing under the Old Time Religion. Somehow it also brings to mind then-Cardinal Ratzinger’s eulogizing of Hans von Balthasar as “the most cultured man in Europe.”

Years ago I picked up Richard Brookheiser’s rather reactionary -- and also rather right -- book called The Way of the WASP. It was there for the first time I read the suggestion that Karl Barth actually had a mistress. When I investigated, I read reams of internet defense that explained the relationship was a professional one, of something to that strange-sounding effect. OK, fine. Much like belleletrist Hans von Balthasar and his box-faced muse Adrienne Von Spear, I thought. Or Karl Rahner with his semi-to-sexual mistress. Or whatever... These avant garde theologians, always equivocal, often neutered, and apparently incapable of getting along by themselves... OR so I thought. It turns out the first, gut instinct was correct. 2 + 2 = 4. And while it’s sometimes “Both/And,” a la the new fashion in the Vatican, it’s much more often “Either/Or” or “Heaven or Hell.” Read for yourself...

Read more >>

"George Weigel: The Swan Song of the Catholic Neocons"

[Disclaimer: Rules ##7-9]

A Review of George Weigel’s Lessons in Hope: My Unexpected Life with St. John Paul II (Basic Books, 2017), by Dr. Jesse Russell, Fetzen Fliegen (A Remnant newspaper blog, September 7, 2017):

The notorious journalist and friend of Catholic traditionalist Patrick Buchanan, Hunter S. Thompson once wrote in his famous essay “The Hippies”: “The best year to be a hippie was 1965, but then there was not much to write about, because not much was happening in public and most of what was happening in private was illegal.”

A similar statement could be made of Catholic neoconservatives: the best year to be a Catholic neoconservative was 2001. September 11 had given the green light to the destruction of any country that stood in the way of the New World Order’s goal of global hegemony. With magazines like First Things and books such as Witness to Hope and The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism, the very polite triumvirate of neoconservative leaders, Fr. Richard Neuhaus, George Weigel, and Michael Novak, had not only complete control over the American reception of John Paul II’s life and work, but increasing access to the White House of President George W. Bush.

Many bishops such as Charles Chaput, Francis George, and Timothy Dolan (whom Weigel refers to as an “old friend”) were the under the spell of Weigel, Neuhaus, and Novak. Even the lumbering, felt-banner-adorned battleship of old liberals called the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops was turning toward the shores of the “new” Catholic conservativism born from Fr. John Courtney Murray and Jacques Maritain.

But then something happened. Like a Greek tragic hero, the Catholic neocons at the apex of their power, fell from grace.

"Shack" Theology

Gavin Ortlund, "The god of William Paul Young" (TGC, April 28, 2017):

Paul Young’s The Shack has sold 20 million copies, inspired a major motion picture, and generated a lot of spiritual reflection and conversation. Some have appreciated its depiction of faith and suffering. Others have been uncomfortable with its theological eccentricities. More than a few have used the “h word” to describe it (heresy). But the fact that The Shack (and Young’s other books) are novels has made it difficult to know exactly how to place them.

Now, with the publication of his first non-fiction work, Lies We Believe About God, Young gives a more propositional, concrete expression of his beliefs. Although this book casts itself as tentative and conversational (20–21), it definitely advocates theological positions, often quite energetically. Its 28 chapters are each devoted to exposing a “lie” we believe about God, and expounding the corresponding opposite truth.

Unfortunately, the theology espoused in this book represents a wide and unambiguous deviation from orthodox Christian views. I mean no personal animus to the author in saying this, nor do I question his intentions. But the reason categories like “orthodoxy” and “heresy” arose in church history is because Christians have maintained there are right and wrong ways to think about God, and that pointing out the difference matters. When a book departs from historic, mainstream Christianity, it’s important to make the differences clear. Read more >>

Our underground correspondent, Guy Noir - Private Eye, who called our attention to this review asks whether this represents where a portion of modern Catholicism in America and Europe is positioning itself under the rhetoric of Pope Francis. They could never officially condone it, he says, but they don't need to: "Non-condemnation or equivocation is its own endorsement in these knee-jerk, social media times. Dissent non-condemned becomes a legit option. And those voicing concern become uptight haters."

What one traditionalist is saying about Benedict XVI's theology

Msgr. Bernard Tissier de Mallerais, "Faith imperilled by reason: Benedict XVI's hermeneutics" (from La Sel de Terre, Issue 69, Summer 2009, via Biblia y Tradicion, translated by C. Wilson.

"After reading this fascinating essay," writes Peter Chojnowski in his Preface, "anyone who thought that 'reconciliation' between Catholic Tradition and Vatican II theology is right around the corner will have to think again!"

[Hat tip to Sir A.S.]

Jeff Mirus's critique of Henri de Lubac

Dr. Jeff Mirus, "Henri de Lubac's fascinating notes on Vatican II" (CatholicCulture.org, August 18, 2015):

Here I explore the notes made by the French theologian Henri de Lubac as he prepared for and participated in the Second Vatican Council. I will gradually add revealing excerpts and comments from successive stages of de Lubac’s involvement. Each stage will be linked below. They will be announced in City Gates as they are added.

• Introduction
• Theological Background
• Preparing for the Council: Highlights through the end of 1961 (presented 5/1/2015)
• Final Preparations: Highlights from 1962 until the Council opened on October 11th (presented 5/8/2015)
• Early Weeks of the Council (presented 5/26/2015)
• Discussing Revelation: Mid-November 1962 (presented 6/15/2015)
• De Lubac’s Closing Chapter: The End of 1962 (presented 8/18/2015)

Introduction [top]

I’ve been wondering how to handle the decision of Ignatius Press to publish the notebooks kept by Henri de Lubac, SJ on his participation in the Second Vatican Council. Volume I has been released, which covers de Lubac’s observations between July 25, 1960 and September 2, 1963.

In printed form, these observations run to nearly 500 pages, and they include everything from physical descriptions of people he met to brief points of analysis concerning key issues facing the Council. To comb the text searching for particular information would be difficult, and to read the whole thing slowly enough to take my own notes would be unlikely to repay the effort.

And yet de Lubac (1896 - 1991) is a pivotal figure in Catholic theology in the mid-20th century, a man unwillingly locked in a battle on two fronts. On the one side were the largely misguided systematic Thomists who dominated the Roman Curia, expending great energy to secure condemnations of every insight that did not fit conveniently into their own excessively abstract system—almost a philosophy rather than a theology, and increasingly divorced from the sources of theology in Scripture and the Fathers. On the other roamed the Modernists, rapidly rising to leadership in the Jesuit Order and elsewhere, who for many good reasons distrusted the narrow establishment in Rome, but who spiraled into an unbridled secularism which has seriously undermined the Faith.

So some notice must be taken of this new and important resource for understanding the questions, problems, personalities, and even hostile forces surrounding the work of the Council. What I have decided to do, therefore, is read through the notebooks at my leisure, mostly for enjoyment, marking brief passages which shed light on issues of continuing importance. Then, in a series of “interventions” of my own (not to the body of bishops but to my readers in this space), I will present and sometimes comment on what I have found to be of special interest.

To make things easier for readers, who will have to digest this material in fits and starts according to my own schedule, I will use internal links which lead to the beginning of each new and dated addition of highlights. In addition, italics will be used to indicate my own comments. Paragraphs in regular type are de Lubac’s own words. But before I begin to notice the most interesting aspects of the notebooks, I will offer just a little bit of background.

A Christmas Reflection: What if the Biblical Narrative were True?

It's time to reconsider the reason for the season and the challenges offered by the drive-by "experts" of the day who intend to cast the entire Biblical narrative concerning the Blessed Nativity into doubt. Consider again the Biblical narrative:

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God, and saying,

Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, good will toward men.

And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another,

Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pas, which the Lord hath made known unto us.

And they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph and the babe lying in a manger. And when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child. And all they that heard it wondered at those things which were told them by the shepherds. But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart. And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen, as it was told unto them. (The Gospel According to Luke, Chapter Two, Verses 13-20)

Here we are again, on the first day of the Christmas season. It has become something of a Christmas tradition for me to engage the following text by C.S. Lewis in connection with the above quoted Scriptures. The reason will be obvious.

Nearly every Christmas, it seems, NEWSWEEK or TIME or some television special will feature the "latest scholarship" questioning the "authenticity" of the Christmas story. I am not concerned with the question about whether the Nativity of our Lord occurred on December 25th. That's a matter of Church tradition and incidental to my concerns here. What concerns me is how the Biblical narrative itself is invariably called into question or even dismissed as mere "myth" -- the account of the shepherds, the Angelic host, the Christ Child in a manger, the Star and the Magi from the East, Herod's slaughter of the innocents, the flight of Mary and Joseph and the Christ Child into Egypt, etc.

The scholarly authorities typically interviewed, whether Catholic or Protestant, are consistently and incorrigibly one-sided, quite thoroughly corrupted by the Humean and Kantian philosophical presuppositions undergirding the historical-critical reading of the Biblical narrative. Typical is the About.com website, where Internet browsers frequent to learn "the facts" about this or that -- a site where one finds this sort of thinking gone to seed in an article by Austin Cline, "Nativity vs Gospels: Are the Gospels Reliable About Jesus' Birth?" (About.com), where the partisan skepticism of such historical critical assumptions is abundantly evident in his suggestions that all the key ingredients of the Nativity story in the Gospels were concocted fictions of various kinds.

The lack of critical circumspection, if not patent fantasy, in all of this would be amusing if it were not so destructive. The upshot is always the same: that the Gospel writers are unreliable and not to be trusted, and certainly not to be taken at face value. Just how ludicrous this all is, however, can be seen easily by anyone with a modicum of familiarity with literature, mythology, and history. One of the best examples of a powerful antedote to this kind of foolishness -- and one I keep using because it is simple -- is a little essay by C.S. Lewis entitled "Modern Theology and Biblical Criticism," which is available in a collection of essays by Lewis entitled Christian Reflections (1967; reprinted by Eerdmans, 1994). The following are some excerpts from Lewis' essay, which begins on p. 152 and contains four objections (or what he calls "bleats") about modern New Testament scholarship:

1. [If a scholar] tells me that something in a Gospel is legend or romance, I want to know how many legends and romances he has read, how well his palate is trained in detecting them by the flavour...

I have been reading poems, romances, vision-literature, legends, myths all my life. I know what they are like. I know that not one [of the stories in the Gospel of John, for example] is like this... Either this is reportage - though it may no doubt contain errors - pretty close up to the facts; nearly as close as Boswell. Or else, some unknown writer in the second century, without known predecessors or successors, suddenly anticipated the whole technique of modern, novelistic, realistic narrative...

2. All theology of the liberal type involves at some point - and often involves throughout - the claim that the real behaviour and purpose and teaching of Christ came very rapidly to be misunderstood and misrepresented by his followers, and has been recovered or exhumed only by modern scholars... The idea that any... writer should be opaque to those who lived in the same culture, spoke the same language, shared the same habitual imagery and unconscious assumptions, and yet be transparent to those who have none of these advantages, is in my opinion preposterous. There is an a priori improbability in it which almost no argument and no evidence could counterbalance.

3. Thirdly, I find in these theologians a constant use of the principle that the miraculous does not occur... This is a purely philosophical question. Scholars, as scholars, speak on it with no more authority than anyone else. The canon 'if miraculous, unhistorical' is one they bring to their study of the texts, not one they have learned from it. If one is speaking of authority, the united authority of all the Biblical critics in the world counts here for nothing.

4. My fourth bleat is my loudest and longest. Reviewers [of my own books, and of books by friends whose real history I knew] both friendly and hostile... will tell you what public events had directed the author's mind to this or that, what other authors influenced him, what his over-all intention was, what sort of audience he principally addressed, why - and when - he did everything... My impression is that in the whole of my experience not one of these guesses has on any one point been right; the method shows a record of 100 per cent failure.

The 'assured results of modern scholarship', as to the way in which an old book was written, are 'assured', we may conclude, only because those who knew the facts are dead and can't blow the gaff... The Biblical critics, whatever reconstructions they devise, can never be crudely proved wrong. St. Mark is dead. When they meet St. Peter there will be more pressing matters to discuss.

However... we are not fundamentalists... Of course we agree that passages almost verbally identical cannot be independent. It is as we glide away from this into reconstructions of a subtler and more ambitious kind that our faith in the method wavers... The sort of statement that arouses our deepest scepticism is the statement that something in a Gospel cannot be historical because it shows a theology or an ecclesiology too developed for so early a date...

Such are the reactions of one bleating layman... Once the layman was anxious to hide the fact that he believed so much less than the Vicar; he now tends to hide the fact that he believes so much more...

Lewis, of course, was hardly a naive ignoramus. He knew all the critical objections to Christianity because for the first part of his life he was himself a confirmed agnostic. He was anything but "soft-minded," to use the Jamesian idiom. He taught philosophy at Oxford briefly before going on to teach Medieval and Renaissance literature at Magdalen College, Oxford, and conclude his prolific academic career teaching at Cambridge. An account of his conversion can be found in his Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life,in which we find the following quotation:

You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. I did not then see what is now the most shining and obvious thing; the Divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms. The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape? The words “compelle intrare,” compel them to come in, have been so abused be wicked men that we shudder at them; but, properly understood, they plumb the depth of the Divine mercy. The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation. (emphasis added)

Lewis, an Anglican, was a man of deep Catholic habit of mind, probably because of his immersion in medieval literature; and many have wondered why he never himself crossed the Tiber. Walker Percy even compared him to Moses, who led many others to the Promised Land, though never himself crossing over. A number of books have been written about this, like Joseph Pearce's C.S. Lewis and the Catholic Church,and Christopher Derrick's C.S.Lewis and the Church of Rome.The most probable reason is cultural: his father was an Ulsterman. Whatever the reason, his common sense criticisms of those Biblical "experts" who attempt to dismantle the entire Biblical narrative under the influence of Enlightenment prejudices, can be accepted with gratitude.

For further reading:

• Jesus Seminar critically examined (edited by Pertinacious Papist)
• C.S. Lewis, Christian Reflections,edited by Walter Hooper.
• If you're interested in reading the relevant chapter from Lewis's book online, click on: "Modern Theology and Biblical Criticism" (Lewis on Biblical Criticism, posted June 10, 2005)
• Hurd Baruch, "The Crisis in Biblical Scholarship" (New Oxford Review, December 2014).
• Mark Giszczak, "The Early Responsa of the Pontifical Biblical Commission" (Catholic bible Student, March 20, 2008)
• J. C. O'Neill, The Bible's Authority: A Portrait Gallery of Thinkers from Lessing to Bultmann(T. & T. Clark Publishers, 1991) - fantastic book offers a critical and scholarly overview of Bible deconstructionists and their abusive use of the historical-critical hermeneutic.

Merry Christmas everyone!

"Reform of reform" is "an error," says Francis; "True love is not rigid"

"IMPORTANT: In interview, Pope Francis questions Traditional Catholics and their motives; Ends 'Reform of the Reform' for good" (Rorate Caeli, November 11, 2016):

The excerpt is translated by Rorate from the interview published in the past few days in Italy -- the interview was conducted by the editor of the official journal of the Holy See (Civiltà Cattolica), Fr. Antonio Spadaro, SI, as part of a book containing homilies of the Pope when he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires:

***
The simplicity of children makes me also think of adults, with a rite that is direct, participated intensely [translator's note: reference to notion of 'actuosa participatio'], of parish masses experienced with so much piety. What comes to mind are proposals that encourage priests to turn their backs to the faithful, to rethink Vatican II, to use Latin. I ask the Pope what he thinks of this. The Pope answers:

[Pope:] "Pope Benedict accomplished a just and magnanimous gesture [translator's note: the motu proprio 'Summorum Pontificum'] to reach out to a certain mindset of some groups and persons who felt nostalgia and were distancing themselves. But it is an exception. That is why one speaks of an 'extraordinary' rite. The ordinary in the Church is not this. It is necessary to approach with magnanimity those attached to a certain form of prayer. But the ordinary is not this. Vatican II and Sacrosanctum Concilium must go on as they are. To speak of a 'reform of the reform' is an error."

I ask him: "Other than those who are sincere and ask for this possibility out of habit or devotion, can this desire express something else? Are there dangers?"

[Pope:] "I ask myself about this. For example, I always try to understand what is behind those individuals who are too young to have lived the pre-Conciliar liturgy, and who want it nonetheless. I have at times found myself in front of people who are too rigid, an attitude of rigidity. And I ask myself: how come so much rigidity? You dig, you dig, this rigidity always hides something: insecurity, at times perhaps something else... [sic] The rigidity is defensive. True love is not rigid."

I insist: what about tradition? Some understand it in a rigid way.

[Pope:] "But no: tradition blooms!" he responds. "There is a Traditionalism that is a rigid fundamentalism: it is not good. Faithfulness instead implies a growth. Tradition, in the transmission from one age to the next of the deposit of the faith, grows and consolidates with the passage of time, as Saint Vincent of Lérins said in his Commonitorium Primum. I read it always in my breviary: 'Ita etiam christianae religionis dogma sequatur has decet profectuum leges, ut annis scilicet consolidetur, dilatetur tempore, sublimetur aetate' (Also the dogma of the Christian religion must follow these laws. It progresses, consolidating with the years, developing with time, deepening with the age.)"

[Pages provided by Mr. Andrew Guernsey]

*****

Rorate's comment (in the form of a Tweet):

St Paul: "The sure foundation of God stands firm"
Pope Francis: "These firm, rigid, Catholics are insecure, and are hiding something!"

I can't believe First Things ran this ad

Were my eyes deceiving me? I saw this full page ad in First Things (Nov. 2016 issue, p. 15) advertising a book entitled A Retreat with Teilhard de Chardin by Rev. Donald Goergen, O.P., Ph.D. (Aquinas Institute of Theology):

Experience the towering mysticism of Teilhard de Chardin in this one-of-a-kind retreat that you can experience in your home or car.

Presented by gifted professor, author, and contemplative retreat leader Rev. Donald Goergen, O.P. A Retreat with Teilhard de Chardin will capture your spiritual imagination and deepen your life with Christ. There conferences are life-changing [Yeah, I bet!].

Trained as a scientist and ordained as a Jesuit priest, Teilhard had a mystical vision of the world was [sic.] both universal and deeply personal. This moving retreat will lead you to discover how this vision can shape your spirituality today [Shirley Maclaine would love this!]. Let Teilhard accompany you and offer wise guidance in your journey to eternal life.

Oh, brother!

Jesuitical 'genius': when "development of doctrine" becomes a convenient pretext for revisionism

In a telling review of an article by Jesuit theologian, Thomas Rausch, S.J., which appeared in Civiltà Cattolica, entitled "Doctrine at the service of the pastoral mission of the Church," the irrepressible Christopher A. Ferrara writes:

In typical Modernist fashion, Rausch affirms a Catholic truth in order to deny it throughout the rest of the article. He quotes Saint Vincent of Lerins for the fundamental Catholic truth that legitimate development of Catholic doctrine leaves intact “the same doctrine, the same meaning and the same import­” — precisely as the First Vatican Council affirmed — and that in the course of its legitimate development, meaning only its fuller expression, doctrine “becom[es] firmer over the years, more ample in the course of time, more exalted as it advances in age.” That is, there is no change in doctrine, either in content or understanding, but only strengthening and growth of expression. Hence St. Vincent’s famous formula: “We hold that faith which has been believed everywhere, always, by all.” There is no “God of surprises” in the thought of St. Vincent nor in the tradition of the Church.

Having affirmed this truth, however, Rausch promptly denies it, quoting his fellow Modernist Jesuit, Fr. Spadaro, for the following proposition:

"St. Vincent of Lèrins makes a comparison between the biological development of man and the transmission from one era to another of the depositum fidei [deposit of faith], which grows and is strengthened with time. Here, human self-understanding changes with time and, so too is human consciousness deepened. In this regard we could think of the time when slavery was considered acceptable, or the death penalty was applied without question. So, too, this is how we grow in the understanding of the truth. Exegetes and theologians help the Church to mature in her own judgment. The other sciences and their development also help the Church in its growth in understanding. There are secondary ecclesiastical rules and precepts that at one time were effective, but now they have lost their value and meaning. The view that the Church’s teaching is a monolith to defend without nuance or different understandings is wrong."

Note the stealthy non-sequitur smuggled in via the italicized phrases: from St. Vincent’s biological analogy regarding the growth and development of the same, unchanging doctrine in the Church, Rausch (citing only his fellow Modernist for authority) leaps to the conclusion that just as “human self-understanding changes with time” so the Church’s teaching is subject over time to “different understandings.” Of course, that is exactly the opposite of what Rausch affirmed only a few lines earlier: i.e., St. Vincent’s insistence on “the same doctrine, the same meaning and the same import” down through the ages. God does not change His understanding of the truth, and neither does the Church change her understanding of faith and morals.

Ferrara goes on to point out that Rausch's references to slavery and the death penalty are red herrings, and the Church's nuanced positions on these issues do not represent any 'change' in the 'understanding' of doctrine. "The very essence of Modernism, he says, "is to deny what the Modernist appears to be affirming. Doubletalk is the language of Modernist theology."

Secularizing the Meaning of the Sacred: A Telling Evangelical Assessment of Vatican II

Joseph F. Martin, "What He Saw at the Revolution" (Imprimatur, June 26, 2016):

You are forewarned: this is a theological post.

​I am reading this small book... a disturbing one for people of an evangelical mindset, and all-too unavoidably on target for those of us with comfortable ideas about Catholicism being the rock who now wonder exactly what's up with Pope Francis etc. Dave Wells wrote Revolution in Rome in 1972, and before Benedict XVIs supposed attempted retrenchment, before the conservative trophy moments of John Paul II and his Catechism of the Catholic Church. Also not long after Anthony Wilhelm's consequential doorstop of a book Christ Among Us (1967).

I remember seeing that brick in households of my Catholic friends well as in my Protestant youth pastor's office, of course, along with Hans King's On Being a Christian (those mainstream Protestants, did they have repressed Catholic-envy complexes back then or what?). Wilhelm looked to my naive eyes like the Catholic counterpoint to The Way, Reach Out, or The Living Bible. And I am sure it sold a zillion more copies than Wells' book, that went unnoticed and then out of print. too bad. Wilhelm is thicker -- mammoth, by comparison. But Wells manages far more cumulative clarity -- and, I'll add, as a Protestant also ironically ends up landing himself far more closely to something that sounds like what was known as genuine Catholic tradition prior to 1961 than the new wave of catechetical writers of which Wilhelm was precursor. By now, of course, we are perpetually reminded of the convenient if semi-oxymoronic coverall of 'Living Tradition,' so everything can simply be dismissed to the haze.​​

Revolution in Rome is both diagnostic and prescient as an overview of what happened at Vatican II, and how the theology inspired by conciliar winds enabled a revolution. The newness of Vatican II involved both medium and content. And it sparked a cycle that 50+ years later remains with us. In his preface to Wells' book John Stott wrote words that could deftly be applied to the reign of Pope Francis in our here and now:

Wells shows himself very sensitive to the acutely painful personal dilemma in which many contemporary Catholics find themselves. The Roman monolith, which for centuries  has appeared inviolable, has at last cracked open. Conservatives and progressives, traditionalists and radicals, are engaged in a fierce power struggle. Because the Council endorsed opinions  which oppose, contradict and exclude each other. The whole church is in unprecedented disarray.

Interestingly, A brand new (2015) book offers confirmation of just what Wells intuited decades ago. Msgr. Brunero Gherardini's book, Vatican Council II: A Debate That Has Not Taken Place, explains:

The rupture, before bearing upon specific matters, bore upon the fundamental inspiration. Certain ostracism had been decreed, ...not towards one or another of the revealed truths proposed as such by the Church [but towards] a certain way of presenting these truths. It thus attacked a theological method, that of scholasticism, that is no longer tolerated. With a particular energy against Thomism, considered by many as outdated and now very far from the sensibility and problems of modern man. One did not realize, nor did not want to believe, that rejecting St. Thomas Aquinas and his method would entail a doctrinal collapse. The ostracism had begun by making itself subtle, penetrating and all-encompassing.
It threw no one out the door, or any theological theory, and still less certain dogmas. [In fact, w]what it evinced was the mentality that in its [own] time [it was] defin[ing] and promulgat[ing] these dogmas.

[But it was] a true rupture because it was strongly wished for, as a necessary condition, as the only way that would allow an answer to hopes and questions that had up till then—since the Enlightenment, that is—remained unanswered. I ask myself if truly all the conciliar Fathers realized that they were objectively in the process of tearing themselves away from this multi-century mentality that until then had expressed the fundamental motivation of life, of prayer, of the teaching and government of the Church.

[Because i]n all, they proposed again the modernist mentality, that against which St. Pius X had taken up a very clear position, expressing his intention of "instaurare omnia in Christo," "restoring all things in Christ" (Eph 1:10). It was thus clearly a manifestation of gegen-Geist.

Today while jogging I had this thought, sparked by my reading and a recent family wedding... The Popes seem scandalized by the drift of the Church, but why? I am assured they are pastors, and not Ivory Tower academics, and so like to think they would be able to engage in some proactive foresight. Yet they seem to me like conflicted parents, ones who tolerate their child living with a boyfriend or girlfriend, possibly even do a bit of encouraging of them to be quietly avant garde, but are later then disappointed when the subsequent grandchildren opt out of getting married in any church ("Nature feels closer to God!"). They operate under what seems like a disconnect. Contra the impression given by Life Magazine spreads of a jolly Pope John waving to peasants, or National Geographic articles on the benevolent Pope Francis hugging teens, Catholic faith can survive only so manny cosmetic touchups for such social media moments before it begins to lose some of its defining edges. The Popes for decades now have been attempting a truce if not synthesis with the impossible-to-stem tides of Modernism, and their overtures continue to produce fundamentally  problematic results. Xavier Rynne's Letters from Vatican City do not stand as a testimony to nothing.

​ In an annotated bibliography Wells observes that in Joseph Ratzinger's commentary on the Council, the great Cardinal seems not quite "candid. One has the impression Ratzinger cannot quite bring himself to say what is really on his mind." Fifty plus years and a steady stream of Raztingerian books later -- some of the latter certainly inspiring -- that impression remains, as does a suspicion that the Council Fathers, even the moderate ones, sort of wanted it both ways. 

A fly in Mr. Weigel's ointment

Philip Trower, "A Missing Link: The Last Fifty Years" (The Wanderer, December 14, 2015):

The Catholic Herald, one of our most reliable English Catholic weeklies, recently published an article by George Weigel on Vatican II and the subsequent fifty years called “Mission Abandoned” and carrying on the cover the phrase “George Weigel says we’ve wasted the last 50 years on infighting.” Professor Weigel is one of our most distinguished Catholic writers who over the years has done great work in the service of the Church. This in itself makes me hesitate to take issue with him. But in addition to that is the fact that if I do I shall expose myself to the charge of carrying on the “infighting.”

However, there is one serious omission in his article which, if it remains unmentioned, will do a serious injustice to all those Catholics, like writers and readers of The Wanderer, who, over a period of fifty years, have done their best to uphold the faith and authentic magisterial teaching often in far from easy circumstances.

The omission is the word “modernism.” The impression is given that the “infighting” has all been between two groups equally Catholic in belief and practice, one labeled “conservative” or “traditionalist,” the other “liberal” who, like political parties, comprise the totality of the Catholic body and whose conflicts have been equally useless and destructive. It is as though Blessed John Henry Newman had tried to explain the Arian crisis after the Council of Nicaea in terms of useless infighting between “liberals” and “conservatives” with Arius representing the former, and Athanasius the latter, and coming to the conclusion that they should have reached a compromise.

Of course I know that Professor Weigel would say nothing of the sort in regard to the fourth century, but it seems to me his article comes close at times to implying that today’s Catholics, finding themselves in a similar situation, should have done just that. This is because he seems to ignore the existence of modernism although it has been a heresy as invasive and widespread as Arianism was in its day.

Over the last fifty years the only alternative to “infighting” for any Catholics who could see that a doctrine was under attack would have been compromising. Was supporting Humanae Vitae or opposing “ongoing revelation” just a matter of “infighting”?

Of course the words “liberal and conservative” can legitimately be applied to matters of policy or pastoral practice, things which the Magisterium has authority to change. They were legitimately used in this way in the 19th century for a time. But when applied to the content of faith, they become lethal. We see the difference in the case of women priests and married clergy. The former is an impossibility. We have St. John Paul II’s Ordinatio Sacerdotalis to remind us of the fact. The latter, as every reasonably well-instructed Catholics knows, could be allowable.

However, to say or imply that all the controversies of the last fifty years have been nothing but conflicts about allowable changes and therefore a waste of time seems to me equivalent to saying that the work of post-Nicaean fathers like St. Athanasius, St. Ambrose, or St. Hilary of Poitiers was a waste of time too. Modernism is or has been no less deadly than Arianism.

Given the debt of gratitude we all owe to Professor Weigel, I deeply regret feeling obliged to say all this. His article, which is mainly about what Pope John wanted from the Second Vatican Council, the new evangelization it was to prepare the way for, and why it didn’t take place sooner, is in every other respect as excellent and enlightening as one would expect.

Read more >>

[Hat tip to JM]

New Vatican document on Judaism provokes controversy

Under the signatures of Cardinal Kurt Koch, Rev. Brial Farrell, and Rev. Norbert Hofmann, SDB, respectively the President, Vice-President and Secretary of the Vatican's Commission for Religious Relations With the Jews, the new document has been just released on December 10, 2015), entitled: "The Gifts and the Calling of God are Irrevocable" (Rom 11:29) - A Reflection on the Theological Questions Pertaining to Catholic-Jewish Relations on the Occasion of the 50th Anniversary of "Nostra Aetate" (NO.4)

The New York Times immediately ran a headline: "Vatican Says Catholics Should Not Try to Convert Jews" (December 10, 2015), reporting: "Catholics should not try to convert Jews, but should work together with them to fight anti-Semitism, the Vatican said on Thursday in a far-reaching document meant to solidify its increasingly positive relations with Jews. John L. Allen Jr. posted an article on Crux the same day, entitled: "Vatican document on Jews proves that revolution is the new routine." Catholic News Service, like most other mainstream Catholic outlets, tiptoed around the issues without shedding much light (See New Vatican document reflects on relations between Catholics, Jews") -- um, yawn .... Not much help.

If you want to see what things look like in the klieg lights, turn from the "Everything is Awesome" cheerleaders to the "Everything is Damned to Hell" doomsayers, and you just might get a clear fix: According to John Vennari, "Blind Guides: Conciliar Vatican Announces 'No Mission' to Convert Jews" (Catholic Family News, December 12, 2015), the document claims:

• The New Covenant does not supersede the Old Covenant;[2]
• The Catholic Church, in principle, should have no mission to convert Jews;[3]
• The Word of God is present to todays Jews by means of the Torah (and equates this to the Word of God being present to Christians through Jesus Christ);[4]
• Modern Jews are in an acceptable position before God regarding salvation;[5]
• “The term covenant, therefore, means a relationship with God that takes effect in different ways for Jews and Christians”;[6]
• “It does not follow that Jews are excluded from God’s salvation because they do not believe in Jesus Christ as the Messiah and the Son of God.”[7]

... and that's just the beginning of his long, long article.

No less interesting is conservative Protestant Peter Helland, on his talk show "Israel," interviewing E. Michael Jones on the recent document:


Why do I think here of the Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times"??? Seems to me that pretty soon those most guilty of being Messias-deniers may not be the Jews, but certain spokesmen for the contemporary Catholic Church.

Teilhard, Universalism, and the little word 'hell'

Elliot Bougis, "On Excluding Exclusion and the Inclusion Delusion: A Few Things to Know and Share" (1P5, November 6, 2015): Leo XIII: "There can be nothing more dangerous than those heretics who admit nearly the whole cycle of doctrine, and yet by one word, as with a drop of poison, infect the real and simple faith taught by our Lord and handed down by Apostolic tradition’…."

[Hat tip to JM]

Worth reading: The 2015 Newman Lecture in Melbourne: - Newman's Conversion of Conscience and the Resolution of the Crisis of Modernity

This year's lecture, the second annual Blessed John Henry Newman Lecture, was delivered by Fr. Scot Armstrong, a founding member of the Brisbane Oratory in Formation, at the Parish of Blessed John Henry Newman, Melbourne, on October 17, 2015. It is entitled "Newman's Conversion of Conscience and the Resolution of the Crisis of Modernity" (Rorate Caeli (November 8, 2015).

What went down, starting back on October 22nd

Everyone won. Everyone lost. Wow. Here are the details. Roberto de Mattei, Corrispondenza Romana (RC, October 27, 2015).

I think of the Jewish merchant in Boccacio's Decameron who told the bishop of Paris after returning from a business trip to Rome that nothing so corrupt and stupid as the Church could possibly have survived all these centuries without God behind it, so he was ready to convert and become a Catholic!

But, come on, lads, can't we do a wee bit better?

"Romano Amerio Defends Tradition from the Grave"

In case you missed it, Br. Andre Marie's article, "Romano Amerio Defends Tradition from the Grave" (Catholicism.org, July 12, 2010): 

Sandro Magister brings our attention to the volume Zibaldone, a posthumously published work of the great Swiss-Italian Philosopher, Romano Amerio. The work is edited by Amerio’s student, Professor Enrico Maria Radaelli, whom we have mentioned on this site before. Like his Iota Unum — which is subtitled “a study of the changes in the Catholic Church in the twentieth century” — Zibaldone presents a frank yet respectful critique of the conciliar and post-conciliar changes. Magister gives us a taste of Amerio’s writing, a passage dated May 2, 1995. Note the defense of “the value of baptism and the entire supernatural order, our whole religion”:

The self-demolition of the Church deplored by Paul VI in the famous speech at the Lombard Seminary on September 11, 1974, is becoming clearer by the day. Even during the council itself, Cardinal Heenan (Primate of England) complained that the bishops had ceased exercising the office of the magisterium, but comforted himself with the observation that this office was fully preserved in the Roman pontificate. The observation was and is false. Today the episcopal magisterium has ceased, and that of the pope as well. Today the magisterium is exercised by theologians who have shaped all of the opinions of the Christian people, and have disqualified the dogma of the faith. I heard an astonishing demonstration of this while listening to the theologian of Radio Maria last night. With boldness and great tranquility, he denied articles of the faith. He taught […] that the pagans to whom the Gospel is not proclaimed, if they follow the dictates of natural justice and try to seek God with sincerity, will go to the beatific vision. This modern doctrine goes back to the ancient Church, but it was always condemned as error. But the ancient theologians, while they held firm the dogma of the faith, nevertheless felt all of the difficulty that dogma encounters, and tried to overcome it with profound thinking. The modern theologians, however, do not perceive the intrinsic difficulties of dogma, but run straight to the ‘lectio facilior,’ sweeping all the doctrinal decrees of the magisterium under the rug. And they do not realize that by doing this they negate the value of baptism and the entire supernatural order, our whole religion. Rejection of the magisterium is widespread on other points as well. Hell, the immortality of the soul, the resurrection of the body, the immutability of God, the historicity of Christ, the unlawfulness of sodomy, the sacred and indissoluble nature of matrimony, the natural law, the primacy of the divine are other arguments in which the magisterium of the theologians has eliminated the magisterium of the Church. This arrogance of the theologians is the most visible phenomenon of self-demolition.

Magister’s brief article is worth reading.

[Hat tip to JM]

"Change a culture, keep the doctrine"

Fr. Ray Blake has an interesting analysis of an Italian Communist thinker and the bearing his ideas may have on the thinking of the "shadow synod," or those teutonic bishops hell-bent on getting their way in the upcoming Synod. The title of his piece is "Change a Culture, Keep the Doctrine" (Fr. Ray Blake's Blog, October 1, 2015).

The upshot? You need have no fear that doctrine will be changed. It won't. But what the teutonic clique has learned ever since the Rhine flowed into the Tiber during Vatican II is that you don't exactly need to change doctrine to get your way. All you need to do is change the culture. How do you do that? By changing the language. Getting bishops and priests and other Catholics to sideline doctrine (it's not going to change anyway, so what of it?) and concentrate on talking about "pastoral provisions," "mercy," "compassion," etc. It's a lot like what Christopher Ferrara talks about under the heading of "viruses." Things like "religious liberty," "ecumenism" and "dialogue" are not doctrinal novelties. You can't really make accusations of "heresy" stick in reference to Vatican II documents, no matter what some traddies suggest. Rather, they are "viruses." What does he mean? New emphases that cannot be stated in clear propositions but can muster a shift in Catholic culture. "Dialogue" suggests all sorts of things. It is rich with an impressive plethora of connotations. Without casting a single shadow on any doctrine, it can shift us away from Tridentine "triumphalism" to a culture of relativism in which we no longer talk about the Catholic Church as the Church outside of which there is no salvation. That just doesn't sit well anymore. Like hell. Who talks about hell and the devil anymore. It's like brining up sex and politics in polite company: simply rude. These ideas needs finessing. Thus we're off and running.

Read the lives of the saints. Read Holy Scripture. Read St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine. And, above all, pray; and I mean spend some serious time everyday in prayer and meditation. Communicate with God almighty. This will keep you grounded, unlike synodical reports, as entertaining as they may be.

[Hat tip to Sir A.S.]