The Roots of the Conflict

Saint Ambrose

Back in the day Conservative Blog Rorate Caeli often had some postings worth the time to read.  That was before they brought on Richard Cippola and Peter Kwasniewski and Benedict Constable as “contributors” and level of rational analysis and critical thinking nose-dived. I like to read things that make me think and re-think my positions—especially if they contain new information I had not previously considered.  Rare to find that, however, these days on Rorate Cael which is usually as insightful as yesterday’s toast. However, I did see a posting last week entitled “The Condemnation of Action Française and the Birth of Vatican II” and was excited to read it.  The title held some possibility that it might be a significant article, or at least give me some more background on the current ever-widening schism between those of us who embrace the Council and those who reject it.  Unfortunately, I ear-marked it for later and by the time I got back to it, it had been taken down. 

Action Française was a Catholic right-wing political movement in late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century France.  It was monarchist and it was deeply anti-Semitic, playing a significant role in the infamous Dreyfus affair. (The family of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre were tied to Action Française.)    The Third French Republic, The French government from the end of the Franco-Prussian War until France’s collapse in the face of Nazi expansion in 1940, was plagued by a lack of social cohesion that polarized French society and Action Française offered an agenda of national unity rooted in France’s historical Catholic culture.  This was opposed—and successfully—by the secularists on the Government’s political left but the rightists were able to offer an effective resistance to the much of the more extreme program of the left, or at least to block some of their proposed anti-clerical legislation. However not all in the Church were willing to sell their Catholicity to Action Française. In 1927 Action Française members were officially denied the sacraments and two years later Pope Pius XI condemned the movement in an effort for rapprochement with the secularist government. The Pope felt that certain right-wing politicians were using the Church for their own political ends rather than acting in good faith.  (The condemnation was lifted by Pius XII at the beginning of the Second World War.) 

The nouvelle théolgie was a movement among theologians—mostly French but also Belgian, Dutch, and Germans—that began about the same time as Action Française fell into disrepute with the Church. The liturgical renewal (some would call it a “revolution”) being born in the Abbeys of Maria Laach, Chevetogne, and Beuron was developing simultaneously as scholars began to study the ancient liturgical texts and better understand the relationship between Patristic theology and pre-13^th century rites. The nouvelle théolgie movement was a reaction against the neo-Thomism promoted by Leo XIII in Aeterni Patris that was so foreign to the ways the Church of the first millennium expressed its faith. Advocates of the nouvelle théolgie looked not to Saint Thomas Aquinas for their theological models but to the older Tradition, to the Fathers of the Church. 

Let me back up for a moment.  From the sub-Apostolic age (approximately 100AD until “The Twelfth-Century Renaissance” the theological foundations of our Catholic faith were set out by a series of bishops and theologians collectively referred to as “The Fathers of the Church.”  The earliest of these is probably Ignatius of Antioch, the final father is Saint Bernard of Claivaux.  The list includes Iranaeus of Lyons, Ambrose, Augustine, John Chrysostom, Gregory the Great, Isidore of Seville, Hilary of Poitiers, Gregory  Nazianzus,  and several dozen other early writers of the Eastern and Western Churches.  These “Fathers” all expressed their teachings in neo-Platonic philosophical terms because in both the Eastern and the Western Christian worlds the dominant way of thinking was neo-Platonism. Neo-Platonism was a “take” on Plato as he was understood and interpreted by Plotinus, a third century philosopher from Greek Egypt.  His philosophy shaped the way people in the Mediterranean world thought and expressed themselves for almost a thousand years.

In the 12^th century, mostly through contact with the world of Arab Philosophy, the West rediscovered Aristotle.  Aristotle had been a disciple of Plato in ancient Athens, but developed his own philosophical methods which depended on logical syllogisms.  Aristotle’s works had been lost in the Western world for centuries but were rediscovered by Arab philosophers in the tenth and eleventh century.  Most prominent among these philosophers was Ibn Sīnā  (or, as we in the West call him, Avicenna).   The cultural exchanges between Islam and the West in the 11^th and 12^th century led to Catholic philosophers becoming very excited about this new way of thinking.  Early Aristotelian thinkers like Peter Abelard were condemned by the Church, but Saint Thomas Aquinas successfully reinterpreted the teachings of the Fathers in this new Aristotelian method and it eventually won the favor of the hierarchy.   Gradually from the thirteenth through the sixteenth century, the Catholic Church abandoned the old neo-Platonic thought and replaced it with Aristotelian, or more commonly called today, Scholastic thought.  In the process, however, Catholic theologians depended less and less on the Fathers of the Church, replacing them with Saint Thomas and his disciples. It proved to be a serious disruption in Catholic intellectual life as the Fathers retreated (or were shoved) off to the sidelines of Catholic thought.

 In the mid-twentieth century advocates of the nouvelle théolgie urged a return to the Fathers as the basis of theological reflection.  An entire generation of theologians: Henri de Lubac, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Yves Congar, Karl Rahner, Hans Küng, Edward Schillebeeckx, Marie-Dominique Chenu, Louis Bouyer, and Jean Daniélou embraced the new methodology.  Several of them suffered at the hands of the Holy Office (today’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and previously known as the Holy Office of the Roman Inquisition) under the indomitable Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani because of their abandonment of neo-Scholasticism but the new way of thinking was to prevail.  These were the men who shaped the thought of the Second Vatican Council.

A challenge has arisen in as much as the Councils of Trent and Vatican I drew on the neo-Scholastic way of thinking whereas Vatican II is shaped by the Patristic heritage.  The ideas of each sound strange, even heretical, to the other.  The neatly packaged syllogisms of Scholastic Theology are clear and precise but lack the mystical depth of the Patristic Tradition.  The theology of the nouvelle théolgie writers is not nearly as sharply delineated and narrowly defined as the work of the Neo-Scholastics but have the antiquity of Tradition to their defense.  As a result the Church has lost the intellectual cohesion of the pre-Conciliar days.  Some of us can live with that ambiguity; others struggle.  Much of the conflict in the Church today is rooted in this theological diversity. 

Pontifex Maximus--The Great Bridgebuilder

On Sunday Pope Francis visited Rome’s historic central Synagogue following a precedent set by his two predecessors, Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI to assure the Jewish community of Rome of his good wishes and to re-iterate the teachings of the Second Vatican Council regarding Catholic-Jewish relations.  Even  more important, however, is Francis’ repeated call, given once more during his visit to the Synagogue, for an end to religion-based violence.  The obvious allusion is to the so-called Islamic State and its program of slaughter of non-Muslims, but the problem is considerably deeper and more wide-spread.  

Coincidentally today begins the week of prayer for Christian Unity.  This practice goes back over a hundred years when then Episcopalian priest, Father Paul Wattson conceived the idea of an annual week of prayer for the restoration of unity among Christian denominations.  Father Wattson and his immediate associates were received into the Catholic Church within a year or two of his beginning the movement for this week of prayer, but the idea persisted both among Catholics and Protestants despite the aversion of the Catholic Church for “ecumenism.”  (Pius XI condemned the Ecumenical Movement in the 1928 Encyclical, Mortalium Animos.)  It was only under Popes John XXIII and Paul VI and the Second Vatican Council that this negative polity was reversed. 

There are still those quasi-Catholics who are opposed to Ecumenism and inter-religious dialogue.  (Ecumenism refers to the move to restore church unity among Christians; Inter-Religious Dialogue concerns the dialogue (in this case) between the Catholic Church and the non-Christian religions.)  Perhaps the most sensitive sticking-point between the Catholic Church and the Lefebvrist semi-schism is  not the liturgy but the teaching of the Second Vatican Council on Ecumenism and on Inter-Religious Dialogue. 

The danger in any sort of theological dialogue, whether ecumenical or inter-religious, is that faith will devolve into syncretism or indifferentism.  In our search for common ground we might settle for the least-common-denominator and settle rather than pursue an honest inquest for the Truth.  There is always a danger when we—individually or collectively—fall into the delusion that “I (or we) possess the fullness of the Truth.”   Truth is not something static—or rather, our appreciation of the Truth is not something static.  Our Christian faith tells us that God has revealed himself once and for all in Christ Jesus, but the history of our Christian faith shows us that we mature in our understanding and apprehension of that Truth over the centuries.  We are able to articulate a faith that would not be unknown to the Apostles but a faith far richer and deeper than they were able to express.  Future generations—if we do not destroy the planet and its inhabitants in the meantime—will be able to comprehend and articulate the Truth far better than we. 

Those who resist the guidance of the Holy Spirit over the Church as we forge into the future hold to the idea that the Church’s treasure house of Truth has all been catalogued and filed and there is nothing more at which we can marvel.  They also betray an astounding ignorance of the history of the Church and how doctrines and disciplines alike have continued to unfold and develop over the centuries.  What if the Fathers of the Church had never cracked open the scripture and help us articulate the Doctrines of the Trinity and of the Incarnation?  What if Saint Augustine had never written his treatises on the Eucharist or on the Church?   What if Saint Gelasius had never composed his Sacramentary?  Or if Saint Gregory had never written his Moralia?  Or what if the Desert Fathers and Mothers had never established Monasticism?  What if Saint Thomas had not taken the work of centuries and re-interpreted it according to Aristotelian/Scholastic Philosophy?  What if the Roman Rite had frozen in the second century?  What if Leo XIII had never initiated the Social Theology that has adapted the Church to the contemporary world?  What if Ignatius Loyola had never established a radically different form of religious life adapted to the Missions and to working undercover in Protestant Europe?  What if the Church had never founded the great universities of Europe in the 12^th and 13 centuries?  What if the Church had suppressed polyphony as a “novelty?”  What if the Roman Rite never abandoned Greek for Latin in the 3^rd century.  What if we had never permitted the Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception to develop in the Middle Ages?  What if we had never let the doctrine of Purgatory develop in the 11^th century?  What if Saint Thomas had never been able to talk about Transubstantiation?  We are a Church that continues to mine the vein of Truth ever more deeply.  Our faith is constant but it is not static.  As Cardinal Newman said: To live is to change and to change often is to live perfectly. 

Meanwhile over at the neo-trad blog Rorate Caeli, John Rao writes an incredibly stupid essay scoring Pope Francis as an “idolator of change.”  Change is threatening and the track of change that the Church has been on (albeit intermittently) since Leo XIII, is particularly threatening to the socio-economic-political establishment.  It is shaking the foundations way beyond levels of which we—or those leading us—are aware.  Even for its insensitivity towards the full participation of women, it is, at seismic levels, shaking the patriarchy found in the Church itself.  But this is where faith comes in.  Faith in not intellectual assent to a fixed body of doctrine but putting ourselves trustingly in the hands of God to do his will to the best of our ability to comprehend how he has revealed it to us.  There are those who long for the fleshpots of Egypt and the slavish security they provide but for those who are God’s chosen ones the uncertainty of the journey through the desert is what will bring us to the Promised Kingdom.  That is a lesson that the Holy Father’s visit to the synagogue keeps us mindful of. 

What Ideology Do Rorate Caeli And ISIS Have In Common?

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, caliph
of the restored Islamic Caliphate 

Kamel Daoud wrote a thought-provoking op-ed piece for the New York Times this morning.  It began

IT might have been an occasion for collectors of omens to rejoice: For the first time in nearly five centuries, in 2015 the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday coincided with Jesus’ birthday. A cause for hope? Too little, it turns out.

Mr. Daoud went on to explain Fundamentalist Islam’s hatred of time and obsession with geography.  With the goal of returning to a “pure Islam,” time becomes the enemy because time represents change and change means decay from the pure ideal.  In the same way, Fundamentalist Islam, represented by ISIS, wants to establish control over geographic space in order to be able to erase the changes of time whether by destroying evidence of time and its changes (the ruins of Palmyra) or by creating the “clean slate” on which the Islamist ideology can be imprinted.

After explaining this Islamic fundamentalist dream of re-creating the world in its own mythic image and likeness, Mr. Dauod goes on to compare it with the policies of the various right-wing nationalist movements taking over European politics right now.  He mentions, in particular, France where the National Front is gaining popularity on its anti-immigrant policy.  He claims that it represents a desire for that pure Gallic society where French culture was unchallenged by the arrival of “The Stranger”—the immigrants from France’s former colonies in Africa.

France has a long history of Gallic xenophobia.  Go back 120 years to the Dreyfus Affair where a Jewish military officer was falsely accused of and framed for passing military secrets on to the German Embassy.  What is so disturbing to those of us who are Christian and who know history is the role the Catholic Church played in the anti-Semitism and xenophobia on which the Dreyfus Affair fed.  The goal was to undo the constitutional changes of the French Revolution and restore the unity of throne and altar of the ancien regime. 

There are Americans who share a similar xenophobic dream for our society.  They want an America that is a “Christian Nation” composed of individuals of European stock.  We not only don’t want those Syrian Muslim refugees, we don’t want our little brown brothers from the south swarming over our borders.  Bring back the America of Ozzie and Harriet. 

You see, there are Christians who, like Islamic extremists, want to establish a “pure Christianity” (or in the case of the Katholik Krazies, a “pure Catholicism”).  Like the Islamic nut-cases they view time and change with a gnostic negativity.  Your Westboro Baptist Church folk or your Jerry Falwells and Pat Robertsons erase twenty centuries of tradition in their romantic revival of an imagined “primitive Christianity.”  They ignore twenty centuries of biblical commentary to impose their own isolated meaning on scripture.  They ignore twenty centuries of Christian heroes as examples to guide us in discipleship.  They hold in contempt twenty centuries of liturgical and spiritual tradition in a futile attempt to erase the time between us and Jesus. 

The Katholik Krazies take a somewhat different approach.  They pick an “ideal spot” in the contemporary world—let’s say for example, the reign of Pius XII (1939-1958) and presume that the doctrine, liturgy, and practice of that time had remained unchanged from Jesus and Apostles (their well-touted myth that the Tridentine Mass is “The Mass of the Ages,” just like the Apostles said Mass; their obsession with late 19^th century neo-scholasticism as the sole model of framing the faith; their models of a monarchial Church with all its Burke-like trappings) and that all subsequent development represents only decay.

An authentically Christian approach to time sees time, not negatively as decay, but as the context in which the Kingdom of God is revealed.  Time is the theatre in which God has revealed himself in Christ Jesus—and continues to reveal himself in the life of the Church.  While it may be a bit much for some to see time as marching towards that Omega Point in which all creation is brought together in Christ, our Christian faith tells us that time is oriented towards that moment of parousia when Christ returns.  For Christians time is holy and we celebrate that in our liturgical seasons.  The Katholik Krazies and other fundamentalists are trapped in a gnostic bubble of negativity that ultimately denies the redemption. 

Mr. Douad finishes his op-ed piece by contrasting the Right-Wing western danger and the Islamic fundamentalist threat writing

One might counter that of the two groups, only Muslim extremists kill. Which is true, at least when it comes to people. But the extremists of the right kill humanism, and that’s the only thing that could save us all.

This brings up our subject for next time: Christians and humanism.  

Rorate Caeli Is In For A Big (And Distressing) Surprise

The new Archbishop, Don Matteo
celebrating (not the Traditional
Latin) Mass.  

Most of the Katholik Krazy blogs are run by white post-menopausal matrons with too much time and too little understanding of our authentic Tradition and consequently are a bit down at the heels when it comes to any theological élan.  An exception used to be Rorate Caeli which, at one time had contributors who could present some cogent arguments for the neo-Traditionalist position.  Over the past three or four years however Rorate Caeli has retained the superciliousness of its glory days but due to contributors like the Reverend Doctor Richard Cipolla  and Francesca Romana and the increasingly pretentious Professor Peter Kwasniewski of Wyoming Catholic College has let the intellectual ground beneath it give way to the most vapid of neo-Traditionalist mush.    

In light of all this, I got a particular kick out of a Rorate posting by “New Catholic” entitled

New Archbishop of Bologna a friend of the Traditional Mass

Pope Francis named today as new Archbishop of Bologna Matteo Zuppi, up to now Auxiliary Bishop of Rome. He has been mentioned here in Rorate for his visits to Santissima Trinita dei Pellegrini, the Personal Parish of the Traditional Mass in Rome (run by the Fraternity of St. Peter) - for instance, in 2014 - and his discreet attempts to help the Franciscans of the Immaculate.

May God keep him faithful, and may he be a worthy successor of the faithful Cardinal Caffarra in the defense of Christian morality. 

First of all, all due respect to those who have entered the Catholic Church as adults, but you don’t let “new converts” speak authoritatively about all things Catholic.  It takes time to plumb the depths of our doctrine, our practices, and our culture.  It takes time and practice—and integration into the community of those who have been born and raised in Catholicism—to absorb a genuine experience of the faith.  Some of the clerical voices of the neo-trads—such distinguished priests as Father Z or the above referenced Rev. Dr. Cipolla or the English Father Hunwicke are all examples of converts who confuse incense with blowing smoke. They want to teach before they have even learned.  “New Catholic” is no different but this time unfamiliarity with Catholicism left egg all over New Catholic’s face and spattered onto the rest of Rorate.  Despite his having celebrated, as an auxiliary bishop of Rome, the Traditional Latin Mass for the FSSP parish at Santissima Trinita, Archbishop Matteo Zuppi is no friend of neo-traditionalism.   Quite to the contrary.  Don Matteo is a protégé Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, the President of the Holy See’s Pontifical Council For the Family and a leading architect of the recent Synod and pusher of the “Kasper Agenda.”  Moreover Archbishop Zuppi has been life-long member of the left-wing Catholic Movement, the Community of Sant’Egidio.

In my Rome days I regularly attended Mass with the Sant’ Egidio Community.  In the early years when they were still in the Church of Sant’Egidio the Saturday night Eucharists were anything but rubrical.  Reverent, yes; beautiful, yes—but very unique liturgically.  Don Matteo was frequently the presider and very relaxed in his style of presiding over the two-hour plus Mass followed by the communal supper.  When the community outgrew the church of Sant’Egidio and moved into the Basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere, the community began inviting various bishops and cardinals—invariably of the left wing of the Church—to preside and preach.  I remember often hearing Cardinal Kasper preach and in particular I remember the remarkable homily on the eve of the 2005 Conclave in which Kasper outlined what the Church needed in a “Good Shepherd.” (It was Good Shepherd Sunday) It was clear from his homily that Cardinal Kasper didn’t consider Cardinal Ratzinger as meeting the bill.  Very clear.  At Santa Maria in Trastevere liturgies became more “high church” and for the most part conformed to the Roman Missal  but remained good examples of Vatican II style liturgy with much contemporary music, communion in both kinds, and both men and women active in various lay ministries. 

Sant’Egidio was the main agency behind the Assisi Interfaith meetings which drew Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus and others to Assisi in1986 and again in 2002.  The Community also sponsored yearly interfaith “prayers for peace” at various sites around the world.  John Paul II was an enthusiastic supporter of these prayer services and of the Community itself, but Cardinal Ratzinger had serious issues about what he perceived to be common worship with those not of Christian faith.  An interfaith meeting was held in Assisi in 2011 with Pope Benedict present but without a common worship service. 

The Community of Sant’Egidio has also been the principle Catholic voice calling for an end to the Death Penalty in the United States and those other countries which still resort to it.  In addition the Community of Sant’Egidio has maintained ties with dozens of organizations that promote a “peace and justice” agenda.  Both theologically and politically it sits on the far left side of the Catholic spectrum.  So while Archbishop Zuppi may know how to say the TLM he comes from a Church that is thoroughly in the Pope Francis model.  Good Luck, Rorate with men like Zuppi in key sees, the Church is getting tied in closer and closer to Pope Francis’ vision.  Let’s hope he gets to fill a few more sees and leave his stamp on the Church.