More Thoughts on Pope Francis, A Bridge Too Far, and The Two Church Problem

It's about the future 

Sitting at breakfast this morning with a colleague we got talking about various priests we knew over the years and found out we both have great admiration for the Society of Saint Columban, a Society of secular priests who work in the missions.  When I was a kid our house was always filled with Columbans and they were all great guys, but there was one in particular who was just the best priest I ever knew—Father Al Buckwalter.  Unfortunately when Father Buckwalter finally got to the foreign missions—his dream—, in Chile, he died in a motorcycle accident after only about six months.    I think the reason I love Pope Francis is that he epitomizes the sort of Church that Father Buckwalter represented to me as a kid.  He was a priest who never judged people but could see the good in everyone.  It was the heady days when Vatican II was in session and this priest represented that optimism that the Good News of Jesus Christ was the key to a better world.  I am not saying that he was naïve and could not see the flaws in human nature—but only that he lived and treated people like he really believed that God’s grace could and would triumph over sin both on the personal and societal levels. 

When I look at the two Churches that have grown up side by side in the fifty years since the Council, I think this is the key difference between them.  I had mentioned that the one Church—a holdover from the Neo-Scholastic centuries of the Reformation/Counter-Reformation period through the Reaction/Recovery from the effects of the French Revolution—has never accepted the fundamental paradigm shift represented in the Second Vatican Council.  That paradigm shift is attributable to the ressourcement theologie of the inter-war period in which theologians such as Yves Congar, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Henri de Lubac and others went to the pre-Scholastic Church Fathers and recovered the Patristic heritage for our modern age. 

It would be simplistic to claim—but essentially true nevertheless—that the patristic theology has a far more positive anthropology than the Neo-Scholastic.   The patristic heritage certainly acknowledges the reality of sin and dysfunction.  I myself am a huge fan of Saint Augustine and nobody but nobody in the Christian tradition calls out sin like Augustine did.  Yet, despite his intellectual appreciation for the frailties of our human nature, Augustine is known as the Doctor Gratiae—the Doctor of Grace. For Augustine the emphasis is not sin, but grace; sin is merely the foil by which we can see the operation of grace. 

I think that perhaps the inability of Pope John Paul II to see the dangers of the direction in which he took the Church—in his allowance of the anti-Vatican II Church to take root and even thrive inside the Conciliar Church—was that he himself was steeped in the Neo-Scholastic philosophy and theology of the pre-conciliar era.  I am not saying that he endorsed the survival of the counter-Church or that he did not endorse the basic direction of the Second Vatican Council, but only that he failed to see the problem of permitting this alternative ecclesiology of those for whom the Council was problematic. He himself didn’t have the monolithic theological models usually associated with Neo-Scholasticism.  He was certainly was open to the ecumenism and inter-religious dialogue of the Council, indeed he was not always as precise in his actions vis a vis other Churches and other religions as some thought that perhaps he should have been.  John Paul also had no personal enthusiasm for the pre-conciliar Liturgy, he merely permitted its revival to keep the peace with those who were being drawn out of the Church by the Lefebvrists and other schismatics.  He never celebrated, at least as far as we know, the usus antiquior and his own liturgical celebrations could be quite avant-garde with liturgical dance, adaptations to local cultures, and some minor but interesting deviations from the official rubrics.  However, when it came to his basic theology John Paul’s Neo-Scholasticism came through loud and clear.  In much of his writing and speaking there was a strong emphasis on sin and the sinfulness of the human person that appealed very much to those on the neo-Traditionalist end of the spectrum. 

Pope Benedict XVI was, in many ways, the reverse image of his predecessor.  Benedict had been, in his life as a theologian, a proponent of the nouvelle theologie. There was nothing of the Neo-Thomist in him and he was—and I have always admired him for this—a strong Augustinian in his theological framework.  His encyclicals and his addresses were far more positivist than those of his predecessor.  He was, however (and so typically German), far less flexible on the connection of theory and practice.  As head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Benedict had been seriously concerned about John Paul’s imprecision in papal dealings with non-Christians and even with non-Catholics.  (The position given to the Archbishop of Canterbury at Benedict’s installation as Pope was markedly different than how that prelate and his predecessors had been ceremonially treated under John Paul II who had always accorded the Anglican Primate a position roughly equivalent to how he treated the various patriarchal representatives of the Orthodox Churches.  On the other hand, Benedict’s precision in these matters puts a very different spin on his giving Holy Communion to Brother Roger, the Protestant Prior of the Taizé Community.)  Benedict, unlike his predecessor, has a strong personal attachment to the pre-Conciliar Rites.  While he never celebrated them during his papacy—at least publicly—he had as a Cardinal been very involved in the Abbey of Fontgombault’s conferences on restoring the old rite.  As Pope he widely extended permission for the use of the pre-conciliar rites even to the point of usurping the authority of local bishops in their diocese to regulate the liturgical usages.  He hoped, I think somewhat naively as an academic might, that the revival of the pre-conciliar rites alongside the Liturgy of Paul VI might in some way create a hybrid rite that would moderate the excesses of each.  Instead, of course, it seems only to have further polarized the liturgical disputes.  My own read on Benedict’s liturgical preferences is that they are not due to his theological convictions but rather to his ardent passion to preserve the cultural heritage of the Europe in which he was raised and which has been so culturally devastated first by Hitler’s crude efforts to create and impose on his conquests a sort of Nazi Art Deco and later by the equally soulless post-modernism and secularism of the last sixty years.  Like the music of Mozart to which Benedict is so deeply attached, the Baroque represents to him the epitome of Western culture.  His garish refurnishing of the Papal Apartments from the elegant simplicity of Paul VI (retained by JPII) to the heavy gilt of the reigns of Pius XII and John XXIII along with his penchant to raid the sacristy for the discarded remnants of his gloriously reigning predecessors, like his conviction that the 20^th century produced no great music, just screamed “Bavarian bourgeois.”  But in this fascination with the antique he validated the efforts of those who thought they could bypass the Conciliar Catholicism of the last sixty years and remain comfortably within the Catholicity of the Church. 

Now along comes Pope Francis who is utterly indifferent to the antiquarianism of Benedict and who doesn’t share the pessimism of John Paul II and we have a problem.  A segment of Catholicism cannot identify with this Pope.  “I am a Catholic, but I don’t have a Pope” is becoming a rallying cry for a gamut of folk that range from climate-change deniers to Baltimore Catechism enthusiasts to Libertarians to fans of Palestrina and Tallis.   Even such recent bastions of Catholicism as Christendom College and the Cardinal Newman Society are teetering.  Rumors are starting to rise that Benedict’s resignation was “coerced” and thus he is still the valid Pope—his aide-de-camp, Archbishop (Gorgeous Georg) Ganswein has had to come out with several affirmations that Benedict himself recognizes Francis as Pope.  Many are wondering—and some are hoping—about what Cardinal Burke’s vow “to resist” Francis should he go too far might mean.  The pot is roiling.  There is considerable concern about the Cardinals Francis has appointed and his ability to shape the next papal election. The September address to a joint session of Congress could be telling.  The upcoming October second session on the Synod on the Family could tip the scales. In the end the worst of what might happen is what should have happened forty years ago—those for whom Vatican II represents unacceptable change need to pack up their birettas and mantillas, um I mean maniples, and go where they can be more comfortable.  Vatican II is here to stay.  Compromise was tried and it proved to be not only a bad choice but an exercise in futility.  We need to cherish our past as history but move into the future in pursuit of the Kingdom of God.  It is a kinder, gentler Church with Francis—a Church that is Rich in the Mercy of God 

More on Myers: What is the Agenda?

Archbishop Myers in a delusional

world: proving the axiom that once

one becomes a bishop one has had

his last bad meal and will never hear

the truth again.

Why would a bishop tell Catholics that they should not present themselves for Holy Communion?  Archbishop Myers of Newark is certainly not the brightest votive candle in the rack but he certainly knows that total doctrinal conformity is no requirement for Holy Communion.  The essential doctrines of the faith are set forth in the historic Creeds and the Nicene Creed was included in the Liturgy in the 11^th century precisely to be a statement of faith for believers to subscribe to before approaching the Eucharist.  Of course by the 11^th century the reception of Holy Communion was in decline with few people receiving the Eucharist more than once or twice a year, and many not even that often which is why the fourth Lateran Council in 1215 had to mandate an annual communion (at Eastertide) for all Catholics.   

In the seventeenth century communions were still rather rare and becoming ever more so due to the influence of Jansenism.  We have often discussed the Jansenist heresy in this blog (March 6,  and November 27, 2011, February 28, March 1, August 19, September 13, 16 and 20, 2012) and I have said that I believe that it is alive and well and thriving in certain sectors of American Catholicism.  Michael Voris of ChurchMilitant.TV (formerly Real Catholic TV) is one proponent of the heresy which is one of the reasons he was ordered to remove the title “Catholic” from his productions and why he is not given an audience in many dioceses.  Christendom College in Front Royal Virginia has a reputation for being tainted with Jansenism as does the seminary at Mount Saint Mary’s Emmitsburg, but these reputations may be due more to individual graduates than actual academic philosophies, courses taught, or faculty teaching.  That being said, there are some that claim that Germain Grisez, professor emeritus of Mortal Theology at Mount Saint Mary’s, picked up the Jansenist mantle of the late Monsignor Gommar de Pauw who had taught at the Mount in the 50’s and 60’s before establishing the Catholic Traditionalist Movement, but I have not read Grisez and while he seems quite rigid, rigidity alone does not make one a Jansenist.  This idea however that in order to approach the Eucharist one must agree in theory and not merely conform in practice to the Church’s moral teaching certainly opens wide the door to Jansenism, especially when the admonition is applied to every detail of every issue.  When one hears the rants that it is necessary to deny the Eucharist to those who disagree with Church teaching in order to “prevent sacrilege,” there is sufficient smoke of self-righteousness to surmise the fires of Jansenism are burning brightly somewhere nearby.

Now, that being said, I doubt that Archbishop Myers is a Jansenist.  Jansenists are usually gaunt and dour folk, rarely suffering from gout.  I would look for another reason.  His Grace knows that at age 71 he is no longer a candidate for a higher see with an attached and much longed for red-hat and while he is not, as I said, bright, neither is he so unobservant as not to see that it is the Donald Wuerls and Timothy Dolans and Sean O’Malleys that get entrusted with the crucial sees.  (Though Charlie Chaput is probably headed for a cardinal’s galero and he can be a bit restrictive on the Eucharist, but I don’t believe Chaput has gone so far out on the crazy limb as Myers.)

“Farmer John” as he is known to his priests (it is that East-Coast snobbery about Midwesterners)  may simply have been bored and wanted some attention before his impending retirement relegates him permanently to the obscurity of an ecclesiastical has-been.  His remark that he felt it necessary to issue the statement because of the lack of clarity on the issue by his brother bishops was not designed to win him support from his peers but it sure has gotten him some attention.  Anyone who has taught second graders knows that infantile minds find negative attention preferable to no attention.  I suspect, however, that His Grace was playing to the Republican bleachers, knowing that that is where the big donors sit.  Like the steward of Luke 16,he is about to be out of a job and may know that he had better make friends fast with the mammon of iniquity as his days of service are coming to an end.  Jesus praised the crafty steward for his astuteness and I don’t disparage the Archbishop for his foresight.  I have met him often enough to know there is no malice in him and we all know well where our own bread is buttered.  Furthermore, I think that he—like many of his colleagues—honestly believe in the Republican philosophy and think it better for America.  I myself find certain planks in the Republican platform that I prefer over the alternatives and in particular I can’t support “abortion rights.”  I believe that a fetus is a human person with an inalienable right to life and that laws that permit that life to be taken at whim are unjust.  I don’t believe this because the Church says so—I believe it based on my (albeit limited) knowledge of biology.  Unlike many of the moral vocal in the anti-abortion camp, I support a consistent life-ethic.  It is not that I think the Church’s teachings here are “true” because the Church says that they are but rather I see that they reflect a Truth that is greater than the teaching of any particular religion.  Well, enough of that sermon; I am getting sidetracked.  I do intend to come out of my political closet in a future entry just for the sake of full-disclosure, but let me say that I believe a Catholic can be a Democrat in good faith and I believe that a Catholic can be in good faith a Republican. Either one requires some compromise with our faith as neither party can claim to be consistent with our Catholic (or even Christian) values but if one had to follow everything the Church teaches when one entered the voting booth either no one of us could vote or no one of us could receive Holy Communion.  ‘nuff  said.     

Everything is For Sale in Rome

The Dome of Saint Peter's from the

Vatican Gardens

Saturday evening I was with a group of friends and one friend passed to another Michael Rose’s book Good Bye Good Men (Regency Publishing, 2002).  They saw the questioning look on my face and the one fellow, the one giving the book, asked me what I thought of it.  I had to admit that I don’t think very much of it.  I think Rose had some points but his reliance on anecdote—and anecdotes from anonymous sources—leaves it void of credibility.  One simply cannot check his “facts” and consequently the book is useless except as a piece of polemic and polemic these days in the Church is as common as “cow pies” in a pasture and worth about as much. 
     This is not to say that he is wrong.  It is clear that there is a gay subculture in the Catholic clergy today.  One only has to see the effeminate approach to worship that many of the younger priests embrace to know that there is a critical absence of male role models in clergy formation programs.  (I don’t mean to equate effeminacy with homosexuality, but in the context of the younger clergy and the way they behave on the altar, I mean “camp.”) Where is the strong, loving, and wise male to lead us in public prayer?  I increasingly see brussles lace clad wraiths with manicured fingers delicately holding tulip shaped chalices as they whisper magic words like a sorceress conjuring her magic.  Don’t misunderstand me, this isn’t a liberal swipe at the conservative younger clergy.  The Legionaries of Christ, a most conservative group and one despised by liberals, for whatever other faults they may have present very good masculine men.  That doesn’t guarantee their sexual orientation, of course, but the Legionaries demonstrate that one doesn’t have to be a pansy to be “orthodox.”  And I don’t believe that a gay priest who is committed to celibacy has, by virtue of his sexual orientation, anything less to offer God and the Church than a heterosexual priest who is committed to celibacy.  In fact, if there is one thing I admire about the Legionaries is that they are committed to something other than themselves. I don’t think their commitment is admirable—it is to the Legion, not to the Church or the Gospel, but at least it isn’t the narcissistic ”it’s all about me” pseudo-priesthood that I see today when I hear priests talk about “at my Mass”  or “in my parish.”  It is Christ’s Priesthood; the Church’s Mass, and the people’s parish. 
     I am currently reading Jason Berry’s Render Unto Rome.  It is more interesting and certainly more credible than Good Bye Good Men, but like Rose’s work, flawed.  I am somewhat disappointed in that.  It is much better researched and carefully footnoted which is one advantage Berry has over Rose, but like Rose he starts with his conclusions and then tries to find the “evidence” to support it.  While I suspect Rose’s evidence is mostly made up—being anecdotal and anonymous and fitting just a bit too perfectly to this thesis, Berry’s evidence is far better footnoted, but still the methodology is flawed.   He has an axe to grind and yet I think he is missing some of the real issues.  He talks about the Legionnaires founder, Father Maciel, and his influence pedaling in Rome—throwing around tens of thousands of dollars at a time to buy the favor of high placed prelates but Berry seems to think that Maciel is unique in this.  How much money did Mother Angelica throw around among the key Curial officials?   How much money did it take for some of our red hats to find a head to sit on?  How much money does Christendom College pay out when it invites various Curial officials to come and give a “lecture?”  What sort of a “stipend” does someone like Cardinal Castrillón Hoyos get when he comes to sing a Pontifical High Mass in the “Extraordinary Form” for the Latin Mass Society—I bet it’s more than the ten dollars I give to have a Mass said for my mother.  And those canons at Gricigliano—you can bet that Cardinal Burke isn’t showing up there in return for just a good lunch.   It was true in Luther’s day and it is true today: “everything is for sale in Rome.”  I think Rose is a man without a conscience who exaggerated to the point of libel to prove his point and I think Berry is a man without imagination who naively undershot the fiscal corruption in the Church.  But I haven’t finished his book yet so let’s see.         

The "New Translation" of the Mass IV: The Liberal/Conservative Battle

Well if this isn’t an evil plot by Benedict and his cronies to destroy the Second Vatican Council,  how did we get to this new translation? 

Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, Archbishop

of Chicago 1982-1996, leader of the

moderates and liberals among the

American Bishops. 

      We Americans like things simple.  Romans like Byzantine intrigue.  We Americans always think people have black hats or white hats, that between good and evil there is a clear divide and that no one can cross from our side (good) to theirs (evil) or from theirs to ours.  Would that human nature was so simple.  It is our Calvinist heritage.  There are those destined to salvation (good, white hats, we love Vatican II) and those destined to damnation (bad, black hats [or maybe, in this case, red] they hate Vatican II).   Romans—long Catholic (not so sure about Christian, but Catholic for sure)—know the reality of the human heart and that the wheat and tares grow together.  Life doesn’t fall into neat patterns.  
      It was actually the “liberals” who were calling for a new missal and a new translation.  we wanted further changes.  We needed more flexibility in the rite.  Maybe every Sunday didn’t need a penitential rite.  Maybe we should be able to use a variety of canticles and not just that same old “Glory to God in the Highest” every week.  The more variety in Eucharistic Prayers the better.  We wanted change to be an ongoing process, so let’s get a new edition of the missal—and as long as we were at, let’s get a more poetic translation of the prayers.  The Anglican Prayer Book has a nice ring to it; the Lutheran Book of Worship flows more smoothly.  Can’t we do better than this bland and boring makeshift sort of translation we had after Vatican II.   
        It was a reasonable suggestion.  The current sacramentary is pretty pedestrian.  We could do better. What we weren’t watching was that the wind had changed.  While we liberals were busy linking arms for the Lord’s Prayer, the Catholic neo-cons were steadily building their case.  (I say neo-cons as such groups as the “Reform of the Reform” are not genuine conservatives or traditionalists—they Church they want to “restore” is the Church of the early twentieth century, not the classic Catholicism of the Patristic era.)  
        Neo-cons are always better organized than liberals.  Liberals are naïve and think that people will instinctively do the “right thing.”  Neo-cons cling to the doctrine of original sin and know that people will act in self-interest.  Liberals think that everything should  be free and are cheap bastards; neo-cons know that the world belongs to those who are committed and they are ready to invest heavily in advancing their agenda.  Consequently those who were appalled by the changes in the liturgy and even more by the effects of those changes, quickly began organizing and cementing their opposition.  Father Fessio organized Adoremus.  Priests in the Diocese of Arlington organized CREDO.  Organizations such as the Latin Mass Society sprang up.  New colleges were founded such as Christendom and Saint Thomas Aquinas.  They invited Cardinals from Rome to come and give talks and to sit on boards.  Mother Angelica’s television network was organized—to give the devil her due, she was in her day one fine businessman—and it broadcast masses that demonstrated Reform of the Reform principles.  There was lots of Latin and never a Eucharistic minister to be seen.  Only men served in liturgical roles and while they did have concelebration, communion in both kinds was restricted to the clergy.  Despite her lack of Episcopal sponsorship for her EWTN network, Mother Angelica created the impression that hers was an official voice of the Church.  Meanwhile letter writing campaigns flooded Roman desks with countless questions: does the priest have to give me communion if I insist on kneeling for it;  Does our pastor have to provide a Tridentine Rite Mass each Sunday if we have fifty people who ask for it; does the priest have to permit girls to be altar servers at his mass.  Letters of complaint went to Rome about earthenware chalices, communion flagons, home-baked bread for the Eucharist.  Priests were accused of celebrating mass dressed as clowns, of permitting women to “concelebrate” Mass with them; of giving communion to non-Catholics.  Bishops would come to Rome for their ad limina visits and be confronted by curial officials with stacks of letters of complaint alleging abuses in their dioceses.  Letters were believed without proof.  Charges were made without substance.  Allegations were accepted on no more than hearsay.  The American Church appeared to be out of control.  
         At the same time there was a leadership vacuum in the American hierarchy that allowed power to devolve on Cardinal Bernard Law, then Archbishop of Boston.  Law has since become legendary for his moral and spiritual bankruptcy, but from the death of Cardinal Krol in 1988 until his resignation in the midst of the sex abuse scandal in 2002 Law was the most powerful bishop in the United States—a “Kingmaker” whose stamp of approval was on every nomination for bishop sent to Rome.  I want to make it clear that His Eminence has never been accused of sexual abuse but his failure to comprehend the seriousness of the problem and his blatant arrogance in defending the indefensible position of most Catholic Bishops, including himself,  in how they handled allegations of abuse have rendered him the reputation as being the single person most responsible for the biggest scandal in the history of the Catholic Church in the United States.  Law, with the assistance of the equally unscrupulous Cardinal Hickey of Washington,  took on the moderately liberal Archbishop of Chicago Joseph Bernardin and broke the liberal camp of American bishops.  Bernardin, dying of pancreatic cancer, had tried to rally the centrist bishops with his “common ground” proposal to build a consensus among American Catholics on important social and theological issues.  In a rare suspension of the protocols that mandate that members of the Sacred College speak only well of each other in public, Cardinal Law savaged Bernadin and his proposals, falling just short of accusing the dying prelate of compromising with heresy.  It was a shameful performance; but not nearly as shamefilled as Law’s fall would be five years later.  Nonetheless, the damage had been done and Law’s years of influence in Rome have assured an intellectual mediocrity in the American episcopate which is distinguished by their lack of perspicacity as they see a vital American Church erode beneath their buskined feet.   It was this lack of backbone that permitted the hierarchy to fall like wheat beneath the wind to the recent wave of liturgical revisions including the new translations.