The Church That Francis Built

Pius XII--each pope in
his own papacy remakes
the Church 

There is no doubt that in two and a half years Pope Francis has effected a radical change in Catholicism—creating a very different Church than the one he inherited from his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI.  The Franciscan Revolution has not yet been complete and its thoroughness will depend, to some extent, on how much longer Francis continues in the papal ministry, but once again the toothpaste is out of the tube and will not successfully be put back, at least in its entirety. 

The most notable change in this papacy is from an emphasis on objective moral norms to a much stronger personalist appreciation for the vagaries of human behavior, most particularly regarding human sexuality.  As practically every commentator has pointed out, Francis has not changed any Church teaching on sexual morality but his openness to encounter and willingness to dialogue with transgendered individuals, the divorced and remarried, people in same-sex relationships, has done far more than change a tone.  It has torn down the barriers that isolated non-conforming individuals from the larger Catholic community.  It has put sexual behavior in its proper context and not let it be any longer the overriding defining characteristic of a person’s moral quality.  Francis doesn’t claim that non-marital sexual relationships are not sins but he treats them like any other area of moral fracture and doesn’t impose some sort of Scarlet Letter on individuals who don’t measure up to our somewhat strict Catholic codes.  Consequently people once seemingly isolated from full participation in the life of the Christian community are finding the Church a comfortable spiritual home and learning to integrate themselves back into the community.  More and more are even taking responsibility for their spiritual integrity and deciding for themselves questions about whether their individual choices are indeed serious fractures in their relationship with God and how to handle their taking responsibility for their moral integrity vis a vis participating in the Eucharist and other sacraments.  There is nothing really new in this except for the scale on which it is proceeding.  Some individuals have long had that maturity and spiritual depth to plumb their own consciences and act accordingly, but it is now almost becoming normative.  This does drive some people of the old Scribe and Pharisee Club ‘round the bend however.  Always did.  Even back in the day when the disciples picked corn on the Sabbath.  But that is another story.

The second way in which the change is becoming effective is a move away from the triumphant style of recent years.  Towards the end of the reign of John Paul II there was a very notable shift in sartorial style in Vatican circles.  Cappae Magnae had not been seen in years but were suddenly popping up at all these “traditional” Pontifical Masses in the “Extraordinary Form.”  Silver buckles and violet and scarlet stockings began appearing on prelatial feet.  JPII kept his ox-blood loafers for everyday, but began wearing some vestments, especially copes, that were exceptionally beautiful but also quite different from the more simple style set by Paul VI and used by JPII himself in the first two thirds of his reign.  Then Benedict hit the scene with a fury that can only be compared to a confused six-year old allowed to raid his Gramma’s attic for dress-up.   I mean he was giving Maggie Smith as the Dowager Countess of Grantham a run for her money in period costume.  I don’t mean to be unkind or demeaning but frankly, it was embarrassing.  It was certainly hard to explain to people who live in the everyday world.  And it was threatening to turn the Church into a bizarre fantasyland as the enthusiasm for vintage costuming trickled down through Bishops Burke and Finn and Slattery and Morlino et al to local clergy.  Francis’ return to the more simple style of vesture as well as his Ford Focus and apartment in the Vatican Guest House has set a standard of normalcy. 

I suppose there are other ways in which Francis has changed the Church.  One would certainly be the reduction of bureaucracy and the levels of transparency, especially in financial matters.  There is still a long way to go in these areas, but more progress has been made in these areas in the last two years than in the previous thirty-five.  Another is the move away from a juridical mentality where every canon and each liturgical rubric was noted and enforced.  Francis is not one for allowing his agenda to be snared by minor points.  Francis’ willingness to speak off the cuff is a huge difference from his predecessors and witnesses to his concern for the broad picture rather than sweating the small stuff.  His permitting free and open discussion at the Synod of Bishops witnesses to this same point.  And of course his willingness to take on the issues of the day—Climate Change, Income Inequality, Migrants—is notable.  His predecessors brought up these issues as well but always heavily veiled with abstractions.  Francis is very specific and concrete in his approach. 

We must remember however that the Church Francis inherited was not the Church as it came down from the Apostles.   John Paul II, along with Cardinal Ratzinger—later Pope Benedict XVI—had done much to create the Church as it stood on March 13, 2013.  It was not the Church John XXIII and Paul VI had left.  Francis’ predecessors re-centralized authority in the Roman Curia at the expense of the local bishops whom Christus Dominus at Vatican II recognized as heads of the local Churches.  Ecumenism and inter-religious dialogue had largely gone into a stall.  Liturgical development had taken an ugly turn with “The Reform of the Reform” and even worse with Ecclesia Dei and Summorum Pontificum.  There was a serious attempt to re-interpret the Second Vatican Council in a minimalist fashion.  In fact, much of what Francis has done, has been to restore the Church to the track envisioned at the Council. 

And John XXIII and Paul VI themselves had radically reshaped the Church that Pius XII had left at his death on October 9, 1958.  Few popes have had the opportunity to shape the Church in their papacy as had Pius XII.  His years as a diplomat gave him the skills to exploit the WWII period and the post-war period to extend papal control at the expense of local bishops and cathedral chapters as well as traditionally autonomous religious communities.  Resistance to Communism required the surrender of local independence to centralized Papal authority.  With henchmen like the American Francis Spellman, the French Maurice Feltin, British Bernard Griffin, and Spaniard Enrique Pla y Deniel Pius was able to control the Church throughout Western Europe and the Americas.  He was uncompromising with the Communist Regimes of Eastern Europe and Asia even though it meant the imprisonment and death of numerous bishops, priests, religious and faithful.   He created a political alliance with the United States government to check the spread of Communism, especially in Latin America and placed the resources of the Church at the disposal of the CIA in their joint efforts.  He was the most powerful pope since the 13^th century apex of papal power and, at least until is health problems began in 1954 was able to concentrate all power, curial and diplomatic, in his own hands.  His failing health and loss of ability to manage the Curia is in great part responsible for creating that behemoth that has plagued every pope since. 

We could go back further and see how Church has morphed to fit the vision of each Pope, some simplifying and others aggrandizing the Church and their own office.  But for this posting suffice it to say that while Pope Francis has done remarkable work, substantially he has done nothing other than what each of his predecessors has done in his reign. 

Thomas Cranmer and the Novus Ordo

Absolution at the 

catafalque in the 

Sarum Rite 

In my previous post, I mentioned that one of the arguments for discontinuity of the Reformation and Post-Reformation Church of England with the Church of England before the Reformation was the new liturgy imposed on the Anglican Church by the Prayer Books of 1549, 1552, and 1559.   If this break in liturgical Tradition signifies not continuity with the ancient Church of England but a new Church, how can we say that the Liturgical Reforms in the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church imposed by Paul VI (the so-called Novus Ordo) do not signify a break with historic Catholicism?  A Catholic who lived in the 1950’s or the 1850’s or the 1250’s would not recognize the current liturgy in the Catholic Church.  How then can we claim continuity?

The reason I bring up this question, of course, is that there are those on the lunatic fringe of Catholicism—or perhaps now beyond even the fringes of Catholicism—who make this argument that the Vatican II Reforms of the Liturgy are somehow equivalent to the liturgical changes made by various Protestant groups from Luther’s Deutsche Messe of the 1520’s to the far more radical revision of the liturgy followed a generation later by the Anabaptist tradition down to the Restoration Tradition with the Disciples of Christ and other Campbellite groups.  Why then does not the Novus Ordo represent a break in Catholicism? 

I think we can see the difference when we compare the liturgical changes in the Anglican Tradition in the sixteenth century with the Catholic experience after Vatican II. 

First: What happened in the sixteenth century Church of England.

In 1549 King Edward VI of England had published under royal mandate a new set of liturgical books for England that did not reform but which abandoned the traditional English rites in favor of entirely new rites.   There had been in England (including the Principality of Wales) for centuries four principal liturgical traditions: the Rites of Sarum (Salisbury), York, Hereford, and Bangor.  Sarum was by far the most common of these rites, the others being more or less localized in the dioceses for which they are named.  These rites preserved ancient English features and differed significantly, though not substantially, from Catholic Rites followed on the continent.   (There were a wide variety of different Catholic Rites in the Western Church as distinct local Rites had developed in the various ecclesiastical provinces and even dioceses.  The “Roman Rite” was but one of many.)  The English Rites—like most Western Rites followed the classic pattern of the Liturgy and used the “Roman Canon” (what is today called Eucharistic Prayer I).  The differences that made the English Rites unique were mostly in the various proper antiphons and in the lectionary and in the rubrics, though the offertory differed from some continental rites in as that it had but a single offering of bread and wine together accompanied by the prayer Suscipe Sancte Trinitas.  After the break with Rome, Henry VIII abolished the Rites of York, Hereford, and Bangor so that the entire kingdom followed the Sarum Usage.  Then, in 1544—still in Henry’s Reign—Cranmer introduced the English Litany, a vernacular set of versicles, responses and collects into the Sarum Liturgy replacing the Latin Litany used in the processional rites which were distinct to the Sarum Usage.  Finally, early in the reign of Edward VI, Cranmer introduced a set of vernacular prayers preparatory for Holy Communion into the Sarum Mass.  All this was done within the context of the ancient Sarum Rite.   But the 1549 book published by Royal Warrant abandoned the Sarum Rite for a Liturgy which, much like Luther’s 1523 Formula Missae, preserved the basic structure of the Mass but not only gave up many distinct Sarum prayers and traditions but eliminated every reference to Sacrifice.  Unlike Luther’s Formula Missae, Cranmer did not do away with the Canon of the Mass (Eucharistic Prayer), retaining only the Words of Institution, but he did eliminate any idea of Eucharistic Sacrifice both from the Canon and from any “offertory” prayers as the bread and wine were prepared. 

The 1549 Liturgy was meant to be the first step towards a more radical liturgy modeled on the Protestant worship found in the Reformed Churches on the Continent, in particular Geneva and Zurich.  The 1552 Prayer Book then introduced a far more Protestant liturgy.  While the 1552 Book left the Liturgy of the Word somewhat intact, moving the Gloria to a post-communion and stripping away the introit (the gradual and alleluia and any sequences had disappeared in the 1549 Book), the Eucharistic Rite was horribly mauled.  The rite placed the distribution of Holy Communion immediately after the Words of Institution, leaving the Canon to be finished in some post-communion prayers and moving the Lord’s Prayer to after Communion.  The purpose in putting the reception of Holy Communion immediately after the Words of Consecration was to emphasize that the Sacrament is given to us for eating Christ’s Body and drinking Christ’s Blood, not for adoration.    Moreover, the 1552 Prayer Book eliminated any vestments other than the surplice (the cope was optional in cathedrals and collegiate churches), the altar cross and candles, and indeed the altar itself (replacing it with a plain wooden table positioned in the chancel.)  All this was to take away any idea of sacrifice and/or its corollary, the priestly ministry of the ordained clergy. 

Cranmer’s intent was to eliminate the ideas

1.   that the Eucharist is a Sacrifice

2.   that Christ is physically present in the Eucharistic bread and wine and thus they can (or should) be adored. 

3.   That the minister of the Eucharist is a priest in the sense of one who is set aside to offer sacrifice. 

The ancient Sarum usage was restored when Queen Mary ascended the throne in 1553 but in 1559, the year after her death, the Protestant Liturgy was again restored by Elizabeth with the 1559 Prayer Book. 

Eleven years later, Pope Pius V—the same Pope who earlier that same year had excommunicated Elizabeth—issued a new Missal for most of the Western Church, eliminating the variety of Rites which had grown up and mandating a uniform Rite for most of the Western Church.  Only those places and those Religious Orders who could show that they had a unique Rite going back at least 200 years were permitted to retain their usages rather than adopt this Roman Rite.  This Roman Rite of Pius V was not the ancient and traditional Roman Rite but a Rite artfully constructed from elements taken from the principal rites of the Western Church.  It eliminated many of the repetitions common in the older rites and it embroidered the 16^th century usage of the Papal Chapel with various (and I would be willing to say, the best) collects, prayers, antiphons, sequences, etc) from different Rites used in the Western Church.  The Reform of the Liturgy following the Council of Trent not only introduced a new Missal, but it eliminated many old customs such as curtaining the altar from view during penitential seasons.  So as to give the faithful more access to the altar and the liturgy, the reforms of Pius V moved the altars from the distant east ends of churches closer to the people, relocating the choirs (in the sense of the chancels, not the scholae cantorum)  behind the altars in what had been the old presbyteria.  In those places where there had been a chancel screen blocking the view of the altar, the screens were torn down.  Most importantly, it gave the Catholic Church a more or less standard liturgical format. 

That liturgy of Pius V underwent minor changes over the centuries, especially under Pius X and then again under Pius XII.  But the Bishops present at the Second Vatican Council wanted a thorough reform of the Rites to facilitate the laity being given a full and intelligent participatory role in the Liturgy. 

The Reforms issued by Paul VI in the 1970 Missal were drastic compared to the earlier reforms of the 1570 Rites, but they were not revolutionary as had been Cranmer’s.  The theology and practice of Eucharistic Sacrifice were clarified and maintained.  The Sacramental nature of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist was reinforced by the prayers and rubrics.  Repetitions and accretions that had crept into the liturgy were eliminated and ancient practices, lost over the centuries, were restored.   Perhaps the most fundamental shift in the liturgy is that Scholastic Theology took a back seat to Patristic Theology and Praxis in designing the 1570 Missal.  But the main direction of the Liturgical Reforms of Paul VI were

1.   a wider and more increased use of scripture in the new lectionary

2.   the translation of the Mass into the language of the faithful to enable them to more consciously participate both in attentive listening and active involvement in the Liturgy

3.   the redistribution of ministries to restore to the baptized their proper role in the liturgy, most notably restoring the ancient ministries of reader and cantor. 

4.   a emphasis on the Sacrificial nature of the Mass as a participation in the One Eternal Sacrifice of Christ offered on Calvary

Cranmer’s liturgy was meant to be a break with tradition—both doctrinally and in praxis.  Paul VI’s reforms were built on tradition and were anxious to restore the faith of the Church as handed down from ancient times without the liturgy becoming anachronistic.  While a Catholic of the 1850’s or the 1550’s might not recognize today’s liturgy, Saint Augustine or Saint Ambrose or Saint Gregory the Great would.  The Liturgy of Paul VI is consistent with the Faith of The Fathers.

"Blessed" Paul VI, How Sad

I am anxious to comment both on the final document of the synod and the homily that Pope Francis gave for the close of the synod, but that hopefully will unfold through the coming week.  Unfortunately, though, right now is a time that I am particularly rushed with both some travel and work pertaining to my “day job.”  For now let me just comment on the beatification of Blessed Paul VI.  

I am not happy about it.  It isn’t that I don’t like Paul VI.  I love Paul VI.  He is my favorite Pope of my lifetime and indeed of the last century and more.  I never go to Rome that I don’t make a pilgrimage to his grave in the Vatican grottoes.  Much of what we credit to John XXIII:  Mass in our own language, the liturgical changes of Vatican II, the progress in ecumenical dialogue (or rather, what progress there was before a freeze set in under John Paul II and Benedict XVI), the Church’s stance on human rights and so much more is actually the contribution of Paul VI.  Paul was Pope for the final three sessions of Vatican II, the sessions from which the documents of the Council emerged.  He took an active role in pushing those documents through in spite of some hard opposition from the conservatives, especially those within the Curia.  Moreover, Paul seems to have been a genuinely holy man.   He had his human flaws—and some of them reportedly were deep—but he also radiated a mature and deep faith.  His final years mirrored the suffering servant: he reminds me of the Mezzo-Soprano Air from the Second Part of Handle’s  Messiah: He was despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.

Paul had long been hated by the neo-trads for the direction in which he led the Council, but His Encyclical Humanae Vitae brought down upon him the wrath of the liberals whose disappointment morphed quickly into a scornful wrath.  Is Paul a saint?  I have no doubt.  But we don’t need more pope-saints, or even blesseds right now.  Yes, we need more married people saints, but that is not my point.  In canonizing or beatifying popes or cardinals or bishops, we are canonizing the Institution.  That is not a good idea.  We need to move away from the Institutional model of Church and embrace the other models, especially the Servant model.  I am not saying that there are no bishops or clergy who should be raised to the altars.  You have the martyr bishop, Oscar Romero.  You have Dom Helder Camara, the Bishop of the Poor.  There are circumstances of their lives that outweigh the episcopal handicap.  They transcended their hierarchical status, their being part of the institution, to identify with the poorest of Christ’s people.  Despite their being prelates, they are symbols of the least of Christ’s brothers and sisters. 

Dorothy Day said that she did not want to be trivialized by being declared a saint.  That is my other objection to beatifying Paul VI.  He was too great a pope to be turned into plaster statues; his contribution to the Church too great to be relegated to the dust bin of pious thought.  I think he would be embarrassed by it as well.  He knew his flaws and he took them seriously.  I suspect—and again, I can only suspect and this may, in fact, be what psychologists call “projection” but I suspect that Paul would rather have been forgotten and only that his work remain than that he be remembered and his work pushed into his shadow.  

Introducing Katholic Krazies 5

Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre

Well to look at the next group of sedevacantist krazies we first have to jump ahead a little and look at Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and his Society of Saint Pius X.  Lefebvre was no sedevacantist but his anti-Vatican II rebellion attracted several followers who did eventually lapse into sedevacantism.  So let’s look at the Archbishop and his founding what is still the strongest anti-Vatican II movement in the Church and then we will look at Daniel Dolan, Anthony Cekada and others whom his rebellion spawned into rejecting not merely the Council but the last five popes. 

Our anti-hero, Marcel Lefebvre, was born November 29, 1905 in Tourcoing on the Belgian border.  The Lefebvres were well to do factory owners who were ardent monarchists with ties to Action Francaise, the arch-conservative anti-Semitic Catholic political movement.   Marcel was the third of eight children.  During the German occupation of France in World War II, Marcel’s father, Rene’s, French nationalism trumped his anti-Semitism and he was active in the Resistance and a British spy.  He had also spied for the British and against the Germans during World War I.  Arrested by the Nazi’s in 1942, Rene was sent to Berlin where he was tried and condemned to death.  Sent to Sonnenberg Concentration Camp in East Prussia, he died in 1944. 

Meanwhile, his son, Marcel had, at the insistence of his father, gone to Rome to study for the priesthood at the French College.  The Lefebvre’s were an old family and had over the eighteenth and nineteenth century given several bishops and a cardinal to the Church.  Marcel’s father wanted his sons—Marcel’s brother, René, was also packed off to the French College—to have every advantage in attaining a prelacy.  Lefebvre was required by French Law to interrupt his studies for military service from 1926-27.  Rigidly methodical and disciplined, he was a natural in the military, but when his year of compulsory service was finished, he returned to the seminary and was ordained priest for the Archdiocese of Lille in 1929.

While studying in Rome, Lefebvre fell under the influence of Henri LeFloch.  LeFloch was rector of the French College but was also a member of the Holy Ghost Fathers, today known as the Spiritans.  LeFebvre wanted to transfer from the Archdiocese to the Holy Ghost Fathers but his Archbishop, the famous Cardinal Cardinal Liénart, insisted he do parish work for a year before releasing him.  In 1931 LeFebvre entered the novitiate of the Holy Ghost Fathers and a year later made temporary profession.  Even before he took his final vows in the Holy Ghost Fathers he was made rector of their seminary in Gabon in West Africa.  Called back to France at the end of World War II he was made rector of the Holy Ghost Seminary at Mortain, but two years later Pius XII named him Vicar Apostolic in Senegal and he was consecrated a bishop in September 1947.  The following year he was named an Archbishop and Apostolic Delegate to all the French speaking countries of Africa.  In 1955 he became the first Archbishop of Dakar.  He was consulted by Pius XII when Pius, shortly before his death, wrote the missionary encyclical, Fidei Donum.  In 1960 John XXIII appointed Lefebvre to the preparatory commission for the Second Vatican Council and in 1962 translated Lefebvre to the Diocese of Tulle in France,  a bishopric but retaining the dignity and title of Archbishop as a personal honor. 

In 1962 Archbishop LeFebvre was elected Superior General of the Holy Ghost Fathers and resigned his diocese.  His election was not an affirmation but rather the result of a struggle within the Congregation between a conservative faction, represented by Lefebvre, and a progressive wing that wanted change.  His six years as General Superior were marked by intense infighting and factions within the Congregation.  At the 1968 Chapter, the Capitulars’ first act was to elect several moderators to preside over the Chapter rather than permit Lefebvre as General Superior, control the Chapter.  This, by the way, is not an unusual procedure.  To the contrary, the General Superior and his Council all cease in office when a Chapter opens so that the election of the Superior and Council cannot be controlled by the incumbents.  Lefebvre however saw the handwriting on the wall that he was not to be returned to office and submitted his resignation to Paul VI.  He seems to have shown some resentment that his fellow Spiritans “no longer wished to listen” to him. 

Pope Paul was a deeply empathetic man and while he undoubtedly felt sorry for the hurt that LeFebvre was suffering at the hands of his fellow Spiritans, he was probably more in sympathy with the Congregation than with the former superior.  LeFebvre had shown his colors boldly during the Council when he teamed up with Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani in an attempt to stop the decree on Religious Liberty.  Ottaviani, LeFebvre, and several other prelates were appalled at the reversal of Church policy represented in the Conciliar Decree, Dignitatis Humanae, which said—contrary to previous Church teaching—that all human persons should have the freedom to worship God according to their conscience and consequently, the civil law should guarantee a freedom of religion. 

We take freedom of religion for granted as it has long been part of our American Tradition, but it had even longer been condemned by Rome as heretical.  Indeed as late as the 1950’s American Jesuit John Courtney Murray had been silenced by Rome and forbidden to teach or publish on the subject of religious freedom for upholding the American principle.  The Conciliar reversal on this matter is the chief difficulty that Archbishop Lefebvre and his followers had (and have) to the Second Vatican Council.  It is also one of the chief “heresies” identified by the sedevacantists for their rejection of the post-conciliar papacy. 

Despite his objections to Dignitatis Humanae, Lefebvre did sign the document when it was promulgated.  He later recanted his signature. 

In the liturgical reforms after Vatican II a number of traditions in the Roman Rite were eliminated, among them the conferral of tonsure on candidates for major orders, the major order of subdeacon, the minor orders of porter and exorcist.   Moreover the minor orders of acolyte and lector were renamed “ministries.”  Several conservative seminarians from the French College in Rome approached Archbishop Lefebvre requesting to be tonsured.  Lefebvre agreed but also realized that such tradition minded seminarians would not last long in the established French seminaries.  He decided to open his own seminary at Fribourg in French-speaking Switzerland.  This seminary moved to Écone in 1971.  With permission of the Bishop of Fribourg, Lefebvre established the Society of Saint Pius X as a pious union of the faithful.  The bishop withdrew his permission, however, in 1975 and despite a mandate from the Vatican, Lefebvre did not dissolve the society; In fact, the following year he ordained the first priests for the society without permission of the local bishop. 

Just as it is forbidden to consecrate a bishop without a mandate from the Pope, so too is it forbidden a bishop or ordain a man a priest without the permission of the local bishop.  Indeed, the entire French Episcopal Conference had informed Archbishop Lefebvre that they would not accept into their dioceses any priest who had been educated at Écone.  As Archbishop Lefebvre was no longer an ordinary (the head of a diocese) he had no authority to ordain priests.  In ordaining them,  he was ordaining men to the priesthood without a Church in which they could be priests.  (A secular priest is ordained for a particular local Church, i.e. a diocese.)  Priests are not meant to be free agents, but rather to assist a Bishop in the ministry of his diocese.  Archbishop Lefebvre had been warned by a letter from the Holy See not to ordain any priests.  When he ignored this letter, he was suspended from his functions as a bishop.  He then decided to pour gasoline on the fire and stated that the Second Vatican Council had been an alliance between the highest offices of the Church and international Freemasonry.  This attack on the Council had him suspended from all priestly functions, including the saying of Mass.   He met with both Pope Paul VI and John Paul II, but his French temper only resulted in an ever-deepening schism.  In 1988 the schism became complete when Archbishop Lefebvre consecrated four bishops without papal mandate.  Lefebvre, the two co-consecrators, and the four new bishops were all excommunicate for this act. 

We will revisit Archbishop Lefebvre and his Society of Saint Pius X again in their turn and look more in detail at the schism he caused and which continues today, but we want next to look at several members who left his society and became sedevacantists.  Lefebvre, for all his opposition to both the Council and Popes Paul VI and John Paul II, was not a sedevacantist, but to understand his disciples that fell into that aberration, we had first to look at what Archbishop Lefebvre did and represented.