Tag Archives: Sandro Magister

More Commentary on Gerhard Ludwig Müller And Other Appointments

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Someone kindly sent me several links with commentary about Bishop Gerhard Ludwig Müller and other recent changes in the Roman Curia.  Here they are with some excerpts to whet your appetite to follow the links.

From Sancrucensis:

Reading the Frankfurter Allgemeine on the Holy Father’s appointment of Gerhard Ludwig Müller as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is a bit like going back in time; it is so similar to the sort of thing that they wrote about the Holy Father himself when he was prefect of the CDF:

Combined with his stern gaze and determined body language the bishop’s scarlet choir robes give the impression of a suit of armor (Panzer)  for the fight against the enemies of the Faith and the Church.

They list his acts against pro-choice politicians and the praise that his Handbook of Dogmatiks received from the original “Panzerkardinal”. But then there bring up the enigma: is this the same guy who is friends with Gustavo Gutiérrez, the hero of progressive, “socially conscious” Catholicism?

This time though, one must admit that the caricature is nearer to the truth than last time. No one could hear the Pope Benedict XVI speak without be astonished at how such a gentle,  soft-spoken man could be the kind of heretic-hunting fanatic that he was made out to be. But when I heard G-L M a few years back, he sounded just like the sort of old-style religious energumen that showed up in media reports. But it wasn’t just the 1930s style top-of-the-voice noise of his sermon, but also its triumphalisticly anti-Protestant argument — he was preaching on the sacrificial character of the Mass– that gave this impression. It has been said that in his professorial days Müller used to write letters denouncing his colleagues to the CDF, and it is certainly true that as bishop he used the rod far more vigorously than one expects in Germany. He is constantly bringing cononical sanctions against heterodox theologians, suspending priests, and otherwise annoying the liberals.  It seems that in Bishop Gerhard-Ludwig Müller the CDF at last has a prefect who relishes a fight.

On the shifts at the Congregation for Divine Worship from Sandro Magister's Vatican Diary:

With the pair Cañizares-Di Noia at the top, the congregation seems to have fallen into a cone of shadow. Di Noia does not have the determination of a Ranjith. And the Spanish cardinal – in addition to not concealing a fondness for the Neocatechumenals that is translated into indulgence toward their strange liturgies – doesn't see a problem with returning frequently to his country, perhaps with an eye on Madrid, where Cardinal Antonio Maria Rouco Varela in 2104 will end his mandate as president of the Spanish episcopal conference, and then, at the age of 78, would have to leave the leadership of the diocese.

Thus also the idea proclaimed of setting up within the congregation for divine worship an office that would deal with liturgical architecture and art is fizzling out through the opposition of Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi – theologically and liturgically less in harmony with Ratzinger than Cañizares – who is claiming for his pontifical council of culture, although it is of lower rank, jurisdiction in this area.

Once again, therefore, the congregation for divine worship does not seem to be functioning. And thus, for the fourth time in seven years, one is witnessing a premature change of its secretary. Di Noia has been transferred to the vice presidency of the pontifical commission "Ecclesia Dei," a position not found in the organizational structure of this agency, restructured in 2009 with the motu proprio "Ecclesiae Unitatem," which has the task of following the traditionalist communities and healing the fracture with the Lefebvrist world. The position is not in itself cardinalate.

It is a change that could represent the same problems as the previous ones. In fact, the incoming English bishop Roche, 62, is a protégé of the cardinal emeritus of Westminster, the "liberal" Cormac Murphy O’Connor, whose auxiliary he was as well. And already in the past, with great preoccupation in the more conservative circles of the Roman curia, his name had been circulated for the office he has now obtained. But it must be said that the firm manner in which Roche, as president of the International Commission on English in the Liturgy from 2003 until 2012, defended the new translation of the missal in English, composed under the banner of greater actual fidelity to the Latin "editio typica," won him the hostility of the more progressive component of the Anglophone episcopate.

Edward Pentin interviewed Archbishop Augustine Di Noia at the National Catholic Register:

That being the case, why do you think some Catholics have decided to stick to “frozen” tradition, as it were, rather than coming into full communion?

I don’t honestly know; I can only speculate. To say why people are traditionalist I’d have to say it depends on their experiences. The [reform of the] liturgy has been a factor; it was a terrible revolution and shock for people. Many of these people feel abandoned, like the Church left them at the dock with the ship. So the reasons are very complicated and vary from one type of traditionalism to another and from countries, cultures and contexts in which they have arisen.

Another issue is there’s a failure to recognize a simple fact of the history of the Church: that all theological disagreements need not be Church-dividing. So, for example, the Jesuits and Dominicans had a tremendous disagreement in the 16th century about the theology of grace. In the end, the Pope forbade them to call each other heretics, which they had been doing. The Pope said, “You may continue to hold your theological opinion,” but he refused to give a doctrinal determination, saying the Jesuits or Dominicans were right. Now, this is a very interesting example, because it shows that Catholicism is broad enough to include a tremendous amount of theological diversity and debate. Sometimes the Church will act, but only when it sees people slipping into heresy and therefore breaking off from communion.

Father Z (Father John Zuhlsdorf "fisks" the Pentin interview with Di Noia here.  Fr. Z's comments are in red or in brackets with his emphases.

DiNOIA: The traditionalists that are now in the Church, such as the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, have brought what the Pope has insisted upon: that in the solemnity of the way in which they celebrate the liturgy, especially in the area of the liturgy, they are a testimony to the continuing liveliness of liturgical tradition previous to the Council, which is the message of Summorum Pontificum. The thing is: They can’t say that the Novus Ordo is invalid, but their celebration of the 1962 Missal is something that remains attractive and nourishes faith, even of those who have no experience of it. So that’s a very important factor.

I’ve tried to find an analogy for this. Let’s say the American Constitution can be read in at least two ways: Historians read it, and they are interested in historical context: in the framers, intentions of the framers, the backgrounds of framers and all of that historical work about the Constitution. So, you have a Constitution you can study historically and shed a great deal of light on the meaning of it.  [This analogy doesn't work for me.  Interest in the older forms is not mere interest in history.]

However, when the Supreme Court uses the Constitution, when it’s read as an institutional living document upon which institutions of a country are based, it’s a different reading. So what the framers thought, including not only experts upon whom they’re dependent — they are parallel to the bishops, and the experts are parallel to the periti [theologians who serve participants at an ecumenical council]. [Alas, Your Excellency, this is how we eventually got to the Roe v Wade decision from the Supreme Court.  Analogies limp.]

I must respectfully disagree with Fr. Z about the living tree analogy.  The "living tree" model of interpretation means that one can take the words of a text and pour into them any meaning we want.  We heard this in Canada during the same-sex marriage reference before our Supreme Court — that the word "marriage" was merely a "container" into which the culture could pour whatever meaning it wanted.  I am so not a living tree gal when it comes to the American Constitution!

While I believe we have a living faith in a God who is the same yesterday, today and forever, I do not believe we can be modernist or postmodernist and decide religious texts mean whatever we want them to mean.  This is a huge criticism from those with a more traditional bent, that modernists in the Church can say the Creed, for example, but everything has been emptied of its supernatural content in their minds — treated as metaphor, allegory, etc.

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What Sort of Catholic Church?

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Sandro Magister has written a new article — The Defenders of Tradition Want the Infallible Church Back.  He bases his observations on a newly-published book by the Italian philosopher Romano Amerio, who was also a Catholic traditionalist and critic of the post-Vatican II Church.

Looking at the crisis that has hit the Church, particularly from the 1960’s, it is easy to conclude that the Church was in a “normal” and “pure” condition in the 1950’s and the first years of the 1960’s, and then — as Newman said concerning the Church in Arian times – suffered a “suspension of the functions of the teaching Church.”  In short, there would seem to have been a rupture in the Church’s history.  One will instantly conclude that if this is so, to an absolute extent, then this affects the entire credibility of Catholicism.  From this comes the intellectual construction of justifying the Church by separating the Church as the ontological sacrament of Christ and mystical body from the official institution.  There is a small minority of traditionalists who believe, like the monks of Mount Athos, that any contact with the official Church institution separates the believer from the true Church.  But, let us not be distracted.

Catholics believe that the Church is indefectible (as distinct from infallible).  The Church might be reduced to very little, but would never absolutely cease to exist.  Apologetics have their limits.

The way I see things in the Catholic Church is that many of the ills we see are the result of deconstructionist and heretical movements that sought to achieve the point at which Anglicanism has arrived — in Catholicism.  If we read Spong’s Twelve Theses, and study cultural Marxism and deconstructionism, we will see the extreme caricature of less extreme forms of the apostasy.

The present Holy Father has written extensively about the crisis in Catholicism, and it is legitimate to talk of such a situation in the Catholic Church.  The big problem is knowing what the authorities of the Church should do about it.  We find in Magister’s article a new tendency among some Roman Thomist theologians to question the entire basis of Vatican II.  The question now is one of whether the authorities of the Church should reassert an infallible and coercive Magisterium.  It won’t happen under Benedict XVI, if we look at the differences between him and Cardinal Ottaviani during the Council, but could it happen under a future Pope?

Some of the prelates in the Roman Curia and various dioceses would like to envisage a purer and stricter Church, a simple return to the status quo ante of the 1950’s, as the priests and bishops of the Society of St Pius X would have it.  You just simply wipe out the Council and airbrush out all the years from 1965 to 2011, 2012 or whenever.  Would such a Church be any more than a caricature with infallible definitions served up every day for breakfast and anathemas and excommunications all round?  This is no less absurd than a group pretending to have returned to “pristine antiquity” with a sixteenth century liturgy and repeating parrot-fashion that “Rome hath erred.”

But, on the other side, the Pope keeps issuing documents and exhortations that are mostly ignored, a dead letter before they come off the printing press.  Many dioceses of the Church are being run by bishops who believe like Schori and Spong, and would act accordingly if they could get away with it.  Surely, coercion is necessary if any restoration of the Church is to be more than empty talk like the worn-out old so-called “ecumenical dialogue”.

For traditionalists, if the abandoning of authority and coercion are the causes of the crisis in the post-conciliar Church, then it would be necessary to return to reinforced clericalism and authoritarianism.  These are perhaps the aspects of Catholicism that are the most foreign to the English and Anglican spirit, and which cause the most fear, even for those of traditionalist or “moderate” leanings.

In Sandro Magister’s article, the question comes up about what should be decreed by the great infallible authority.  Romano Amerio identified the same three points that form stumbling blocks between the Society of St Pius X and Rome:

  1. the notion in Vatican II that the Church of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church instead of saying that it is the Catholic Church; [This would seem to be a concession to our old branch theory.]
  2. the notion that Christians worship the same God worshiped by the Jews and Muslims;
  3. the declaration on religious freedom in Dignitatis Humanae, essentially affirming that people have a right not to be constrained against their conscience and to be allowed freedom of religion [including error] within the limits of public law and order.

Pope Benedict XVI seems to have been clear that he does not share the position of those who would promote this proposed return to intransigent Catholicism.  As for subscribing to the branch theory or similar notions, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith declared in 2007 that the subsists in is to be understood as a continuity of meaning from the identity between the Church and the Catholic Church, and that there was a legitimate development between the two ideas.

I personally share the position expressed by the present Pope on the conciliar teaching concerning religious freedom, that there is also a legitimate development between the old position of the Magisterium and that of Vatican II. Father Brian W. Harrison, an Australian Catholic priest and theologian, has studied the question extensively:

A certain number of Anglicans fear this reversion of the Catholic Church to the “intransigent” position, but I hardly see it ever happening.  The Society of St Pius X hardly represents even the position of conservative and orthodox Catholics, many of whom worship according to the old Latin liturgy, and certainly not with the majority of Rome-bound Anglicans.

Unlike the “Taliban” traditionalists, I see many positive things in the teaching of Vatican II.  I refuse the “one thing bad, everything bad” outlook on life.  Following the example of Newman, we see developments in ecclesiology and a more spiritual and less materialistic definition of the Church.  The subsists in expression of Lumen Gentium is not an expression of indifferentism or some half-baked branch theory, but an expression of modern ecclesiology and a richer understanding of the Church and Tradition.  The Church in her sacramental and metaphysical reality subsists in the outward visible signs of the institution, the clergy, communities of faithful, the family and every other manifestation of the incarnate Christ in the world.  I would venture to say that the Church also subsists in other conditions that manifest the Church’s sacramental and metaphysical reality, at least to some extent — the plenitude being in communion with the Holy See.  To go back to Bellarmine and Suarez now, back to the repressive “anti-Modernist” atmosphere of the 1900's, would be madness.

Are the Allah of the Muslims and the Yahweh of the Jews the same God as the Father of the Trinitarian Godhead we worship in spirit and truth?  Can we say with any certitude? Certainly, Jews and Muslims don’t believe in the Trinity or the incarnation of Christ’s divinity in his humanity, but does that mean they worship some deity other than the God of Abraham and Isaac, especially when their Scriptures define God in exactly the same terms as in the Old Testament of our Bible?  This polemic device of traditionalists really does exasperate me.  I am inclined to think they do worship the same God as we do –since there is objectively only one God.  There is no other, unless the other monotheists are idolaters or atheists, and there is no evidence to suppose that.  Both Jews and Muslims condemn idolatry in no uncertain terms and they are not atheists.  The real notion held by traditionalists is that Muslims and Jewish people should be exposed to persecution and discrimination by Christians, and all dialogue and all recognition of their quality of sincere religious people cut off and refused.  I see where all that went in the Hitler era — enough!  Dialogue with other religions need not compromise the identity of Christians or even our claim to adhere to the truth.  We should think for ourselves, and the world would be a more peaceful place for our posterity!

The last element, that of the question of religious freedom, is important for us Anglicans.  We should be embracing the Catholic faith, not because we fear persecution and punishment, but because we have been attracted by the beauty of liturgy and holiness, and have become intellectually convinced by objective truth.  The intégristes hold up examples of Franco's Spain and Pinochet's Chile as Catholic expressions of Christ's Kingdom.  Some priests and bishops actually supported Hitler’s regime during the war!  There is sickening evidence that some bishops and priests collaborated with evil and hoped to use it as a tool for “promoting the social kingship of Christ” and this is just as much a stinking abscess as paedophile priests.  I am glad Vatican II took away the basis for putting people in concentration camps, torturing, executing and otherwise persecuting and penalising people simply because they are not Catholics.  Thank goodness!  Perhaps, things could have been better and more clearly expressed, but that can always be a project in the future for the Pope.

Our blessed Lord himself said to Pilate – My Kingdom is not of this world.  It is a kingdom of the spirit, not a political dictatorship.

Let us Anglicans be careful about what kind of Catholic Church we want.  Let us also be wary of the ideas of a minority of Catholics who would have us in a position of submission and humiliation rather than being welcomed as dignified humans ready to contribute and bring something fresh and new to a Church that hasn’t finished learning.  Vatican II was not wrong about a pilgrim Church, as long as that expression doesn’t take away any right of the Church to be a mother or the Pope to be a father, the Holy Father in Christ’s name, as long as it doesn’t mean that churches have to be made ugly at great expense to appear poor.

I believe in Pope Benedict XVI’s way of persuading and teaching those of us who have a mind open enough to learn and enquire.  Perhaps his gentle and convincing words fall on many deaf ears.  There is the whole drama of faith and reason, the sanctification of humanity and not its abolition and destruction.  I am convinced this Pope and what he is trying to build are right.

I never cease saying it.  We Rome-bound Anglicans are called to bring our freshness and otherness into the Church to contribute to her wealth and beauty.

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