Why You Should Study Bad Popes and Scandals

 When people look at what draws them to Catholicism, you frequently hear about the sacraments, our liturgy, the lives of the saints, etc.  When people want to grow deeper in their faith, they go to the Scriptures, the latest papal document, the latest lay grifter group making money off of slick branding of the Gospel (oh we'll get to you guys eventually), etc.  Outside of the last option, these are all pretty good things to do.

I'm in a bit of a different boat.  I deepened my faith by reading about the truly awful popes the Catholic Church has had in the past, and I loved reading about the abysmal state of Israel and Judah in the Old Testament.  This wasn't something I came to as a traditionalist.  Even upon first entering the Church I always took solace in God's mild rebuke to Jeremiah that if he cannot endure a race against men, how will he endure a race against horses?  In other words, if you can't handle this now, what are you gonna do when things get really bad?  A lot of people have had to answer that question over the years, and I find it instructive for us today.

Make no mistake, we have to answer that question.  It is bad now, and it is likely to get worse. Our leadership is bad now, and its likely to get worse.  How could it get worse than Francis, the dear traditionalist asks?  This is where I think the studying of bad popes is instructive.

Unfortunately, many do this in a dishonest attempt to say "things aren't that bad today" because "hey, at least our pope isn't a moral scoundrel like in previous eras."  Yet in their mistake, they do have a certain point that we should admit.  Doctrinal errors and controversies are bad, yet their impact on history is not as great as believed.

Honorius was condemned by an ecumenical council for ambiguous wording surrounding the Monothelite heresy.  Yet the impact long-term was negligible, outside of a few bits of Catholic trivia.  Vigilius more or less created a schism over ambiguity regarding the Three Chapters controversy (or rather his mismanagement of it), yet the doctrinal error did not survive his deposition, as his successor abandoned his position, and within 50 years Gregory the Great did the first great retcon of Church history, who responded (more or less!) to questions about how Vigilius managed The Three Chapters schism with "Who?"

This might be cold comfort to the struggling Catholic of today who is troubled by Francis' remarks on a variety of things.  Yet it is something we can take solace in:  the pope's ability to influence history for a long time is limited, especially when on ambiguity in doctrine.  We see this play out today.  Remember the pope chastising the mother of a big family for "tempting God?"  No?  Well after making the remark, the Pope spent his next 5 or 6 general audiences trying to unscrew his screwup.  Or his remark that most marriages today were likely invalid, and hence fraudulent?  Not only has he never returned to it, any mention of the validity of marriages in that speech was memory-holed by the Vatican.  Remember his musing about how assorted Catholics today were actually Pelegian heretics?  The CDF released a document telling you to take the Pope seriously, but not literally.  ("Clearly [CLEARLY!], the comparison with the Pelagian and Gnostic heresies intends only to recall general common features")  The other ambiguities will work itself out in time.  Yes, ones faith will be tried, but we have ample historical precedent on this one.

Another reason to study these unfortunate incidents in history is, in their own way, they reveal God's design, and point to the way forward.  Here I speak of those moral scoundrels.  And yes, we must be honest, there have been moral scoundrels.  Anyone who says that every pope, by nature of being a pope, is clearly a saint (as you will see hagiography throughout history, and in practice in today's modern personality cult) has clearly never studied Pope John XII or Pope Benedict IX.  Though somewhat rare, there were entire ages in the Church where the popes were less than exemplary, and the moral failings produced real scandals.  (We should appreciate this more, but I'm already running long.)  What we see is that it is the laity were the ones who drove reform.  Sometimes it was a King or Emperor marching on Rome and helping to clean house.  Other times saints were raised to launch reform movements.  Sometimes the laity of Rome would just throw rotten cabbage at corrupt prelates that wouldn't reform.  Sometimes all it took was one powerful lay individual to implement reform.  Many of the reforms of Trent don't happen without powerful secular rulers or lay nobles working with Church synods.  The era of feudalism and nobles might be gone, but we are not that different, and the laity can still be called to help ensure proper governance in the Church, and proper morals in her clerics.

I admit, the study of these dark times can be bleak, frustrating, maddening, and a host of other things.  But there's also a glimmer of hope for our present age.  It isn't just "In the end, we win."  We do indeed win, but we win because God has given us a chance to fight that battle.

Francis, Civil Unions, and the Abysmal State of Catholic Punditry

 So the Pope said a thing.  Maybe.  And we're not sure what that means even if he said it.  But boy oh boy will Catholic bloggers tell you what to think about it, especially if you're willing to donate to their patreon or get paid per click at Patheo$!

I'll have more later, but really, rushing out commentary to try and get ahead of it is just going to make you look stupid.

Fratelli tutti and the Debate around Fratelli tutti

Pope Francis released a new encyclical. Despite coming in at 43,000 words and only being available to the public for 24 hours, various commentators of varying stripes have assured me that this document is either the greatest challenge to modern society, or proof the Pope is some now not-so-secret Marxist.

Cards on the table, I have not yet read Fratelli tutti, not even a sentence.  Further cards on the table:  I have no plans on reading Fratelli tutti in the short or medium term future.  Yet that is also why you will hear me say little on this topic.  This is not out of some disdain for the Pope's take on Catholic Social teaching, a take that I actually find mostly orthodox, albeit filled with platitudes to the institutions/mechanisms of modern liberalism because the Church of today has more or less made peace with classical liberalism.  Make of that what you will.  One can see in the archives here and elsewhere I've written where I've defended not only Francis' particular right to speak on these issues, but viewed them as valuable.

So why am I not planning on reading it?  Because for crying out loud, its 43,000 words.  There's no way even 90% of the encyclical is that insightful at 43,000 words.  I have not done the math, but I'm willing to bet that the 3 encyclicals plus Evangelii Gaudium probably have as much if not more of a wordcount than the entire corpus of Leo XIII's social magisterium.  (And even if it turns out to be an exaggeration, its probably not that big of one.)  Leo XIII was wordy for his age.  Yet if one reads his encyclicals now, compared to modern ones, its amazing how succinct his writing is.

Yet if I do not plan on reading it, I do think there is something everyone should keep in mind.  The first point is that almost no Catholic reads an encyclical, and few Catholics have ever read encyclicals.  When asked to write an encyclical on the dogmatic principles of Christ's Kingship, Pius XI was openly contemptuous of the idea, writing:

For people are instructed in the truths of faith, and brought to appreciate the inner joys of religion far more effectually by the annual celebration of our sacred mysteries than by any official pronouncement of the teaching of the Church. Such pronouncements usually reach only a few and the more learned among the faithful; feasts reach them all; the former speak but once, the latter speak every year — in fact, forever. The church’s teaching affects the mind primarily; her feasts affect both mind and heart, and have a salutary effect upon the whole of man’s nature. Man is composed of body and soul, and he needs these external festivities so that the sacred rites, in all their beauty and variety, may stimulate him to drink more deeply of the fountain of God’s teaching, that he may make it a part of himself, and use it with profit for his spiritual life.

One can see this even from Francis' own pontificate.  Calling for days of worldwide fasting and reparation as calls mounted for the West to become involved in the Syrian Civil War probably achieved far more than writing a papal encyclical about the benefits of not escalating war.  While some take this attitude to be dismissive of the idea of an educated laity, its not that at all.  In my secular job, I've written training documents on technical matters for new employees.  One of the things I've learned to do is include a "presuppositions" section before the document starts, in which certain access and principles are assumed to be true before beginning.

Encyclicals are technical documents that have varying levels of norms and authorities, as well as requiring certain presuppositions before reading them.  Even assuming they speak clearly (which has always been a dubious proposition), their applicability to most things in life just isn't terribly relevant.  It isn't a surprise that most people look at these documents and shrug, even if they find nothing wrong with them.  As the Pope has morphed into "Catechist in Chief" (a trend that began with the brilliant Leo XIII), a higher value has been placed on encyclicals as a way for the pope to leave his stamp on the world, a value that has not been matched by the returns in any conceivable fashion.  If everyone internalized that paragraph from Pius, it wouldn't be hard to see why.

I think that is a better criticism of the encyclicals than LOLFRANCISISAMARXIST.  As someone who has been around traditionalism for two decades now, there has been an undeniable shift, at least in the circles of its opinion writers.  Back during the pontificate of JPII and even Benedict, traditionalists were far more worried about the dangers of Americanism and skeptical of classical liberalism and capitalism.  The SSPX silenced a priest who spoke a bit too glowingly of the founding of the American government. Sometimes this skepticism they veered into a hostility towards the very idea of a market and their political philosophy was that of the cosplaying absolutist.  Yet as traditionalism has gained greater acceptance, its made a certain accommodation with various political strains.  For decades, Thomas Woods was an outlier in traditionalism, a bit of a unique fellow in that he was a lover of the Latin Mass, yet also a hardcore libertarian who wrote for Lew Rockwell's website.  (Indeed, it was this libertarianism that led to a fallout with a lot of the traditionalist commentariat in general.)  If he wrote a lot of that stuff today, he'd probably find a far larger audience.  (Tim Gordon and Taylor Marshall are a very poor poor man's Thomas Woods.)

Whatever one thinks of this shift, its undoubtedly true that before Francis, a pope who spoke skeptically of classical liberalism and of the way the global economy is structured would find a lot of nodding from traditionalists.  Indeed, on the few instances when John Paul II did this (especially in the non-english warnings to European nations not to trade the slavery of communism for consumerism), trads nodded their head, while his conservative stenographers went to considerable lengths to act like the Pope didn't say what he just said.  I think there's a lot of wisdom in that skepticism, even if at times it went overboard.  I think we trads should appreciate that skepticism anew, even if it comes from a plainly flawed messenger as Francis.

By all means, don't read this encyclical.  Yet also don't comment on it if you haven't read it.  If you do read it, don't read it through the prism of a creeping libertarianism that is the pet hobby of a (I would wager) quite small subset of commentators.

Overthinking the SSPX situation

Restoring the Faith Catholic Media had a pretty hyped debate yesterday about the SSPX, between Jeff Cassman and David Gordon.  If you've got 2 hours of free time, go ahead and give it a listen.  I don't really want to comment per se about the debate, but about what I think is a problem regarding these discussions.  We are overthinking the problem.  The status of the SSPX really boils down to a few key questions:

1.)  Who was originally excommunicated?  

This seems pedantic, but its important.  Contrary to popular belief, the priests of the Society of St. Pius X were never excommunicated.  

In itself, this act was one of disobedience to the Roman Pontiff in a very grave matter and of supreme importance for the unity of the church, such as is the ordination of bishops whereby the apostolic succession is sacramentally perpetuated. Hence such disobedience - which implies in practice the rejection of the Roman primacy - constitutes a schismatic act. In performing such an act, notwithstanding the formal canonical warning sent to them by the Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops on 17 June last, Mons. Lefebvre and the priests Bernard Fellay, Bernard Tissier de Mallerais, Richard Williamson and Alfonso de Galarreta, have incurred the grave penalty of excommunication envisaged by ecclesiastical law.

 (John Paul II, Ecclesia Dei Afflictica, 07/2/88)

The penalty applied to Archbishop Lefebrve, as well as the four priests he consecrated bishop against the pope's wishes.  Now at this point there is usually the digression into the history surrounding canon law, consecration of bishops, states of emergency, etc.  Let's ignore all that. Note that John Paul II did not state that the consecrations created a "schism".  Rather, the consecrations constituted a "schismatic act."  That's not splitting hairs, that's important.  An act can be a schismatic act but not create a schism, much less a schism that perpetuates itself for 30 years.  Rome has been coy over whether or not such an act formalized  a schism, because, honestly, the answer isn't easy.  Certain acts are schismatic without necessarily causing a schism.  This matters for reasons we will get to, but for now, pocket it.

2.)  What was the status of SSPX Priests?    

So we know that the priests themselves were never excommunicated, much less in schism.  What was their status?  In removing the excommunications of the four bishops (kind of important!), Pope Benedict XVI said the following:

The fact that the Society of Saint Pius X does not possess a canonical status in the Church is not, in the end, based on disciplinary but on doctrinal reasons. As long as the Society does not have a canonical status in the Church, its ministers do not exercise legitimate ministries in the Church. There needs to be a distinction, then, between the disciplinary level, which deals with individuals as such, and the doctrinal level, at which ministry and institution are involved. In order to make this clear once again: until the doctrinal questions are clarified, the Society has no canonical status in the Church, and its ministers – even though they have been freed of the ecclesiastical penalty – do not legitimately exercise any ministry in the Church.

A priest who is operating illegitimately is open to canonical penalties, mainly suspension.  Those priests (especially those ordained by Society Bishops) are indeed suspended, which means the Church has placed limits on how they can exercise their priestly ministry.  That is an important distinction because....

3.)  Things have changed since 1988!

Almost every debate about the status of the Society is stuck in a time when John Paul II was still pope. Things have changed.  Pope Benedict's removal of the excommunication on the four bishops was not just a formality.  To the extent they were in schism before then (a debatable proposition) they were almost certainly not as of March 10, 2009.  The status of the Society was simply they did not exercise any ministry in the Church.  It was not "they are outside the Church."

Any doubts about this were removed with the ascension of Pope Francis, who accelerated reconcillation with the SSPX substantially. He gave Bishop Fellay the authority to preside over juridical matters involving sexual abuse by priests in the Society. He granted them faculties to hear confessions (before that they were almost certainly invalid) during the Year of Mercy, and then extended them indefinitely.  He allowed their priests to witness marriages, removing any doubts about their validity.  He suppressed the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, at the request of the SSPX, making clear this is not the Church reaching out to an outside group.  Instead, all negotiations are handled with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, as they are instead doctrinal discussions.

Put bluntly, none of these things can be true if the SSPX is schismatic.  The Pope cannot grant faculties to a schismatic.  If they are schismatic, of what business is it who judges an SSPX priest, who is very clearly not under Rome's jurisdiction? The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith does not have jurisdiction over schismatics, but over Catholics.

4.)  The Pope is Sovereign

People may think what Francis did was a bad idea, or one that adds to confusion.  That argument may have merit.  Yet that argument is irrelevant to an overall point:  The Pope, on matters of communion, is sovereign.  Or, as Pius IX proclaims in Quartus Supra

All these traditions dictate that whoever the Roman Pontiff judges to be a schismatic for not expressly admitting and reverencing his power must stop calling himself Catholic.

The simple fact is that by granting faculties to the SSPX Bishops and priests, the Roman Pontiff has judged them to not be schismatic.  Whatever one thinks of the overall merits of Francis' pontificate, he unambiguously has this authority, and (depending on the publicity and intensity of that opposition) to compel people to believe otherwise is a rare case where you actually are resisting the Pope on an area of legitimacy.

5.)  So what are they?

So they aren't schismatic, they aren't excommunicated.  They can hear confessions and officiate at marriages.  So what exactly is the Society?  Truthfully, its a gray area.  Re-integrating Catholics into full communion is a tricky business, and there often isn't a hard yes/no, as desirable as that would be.  Its clear that due to the concessions of Pope Francis, the statement the Society has no legitimate ministry in the Church is no longer valid.  Which is fine, because, again, the pope is sovereign.  Yet that ministry is still restricted.  While you can fulfill a Sunday obligation at their masses, its still an open question about receiving communion.  Obviously confirmation is still a question up in the air. While unusual and irregular, this is entirely within the discretionary authority of the Holy See.  While the SSPX continue to offer their ministry in spite of some of these restrictions, the duty to punish is relegated to the Holy See alone on this question.  The Holy See has clearly decided that their concessions remain valid and a good idea, even if the SSPX is not reciprocating.  Until that changes, that is the end of this discussion.

Anyone who wants to argue the Society is schismatic has to get around these five issues.  One doesn't need advanced discussions into states of emergency, supplied jurisdiction, or the intent of the Archbishop at the time.  Those discussions may or may not be interesting, but they are not relevant to the current status of the SSPX.