Bishops Crossing the Line

 In a recent statement, Five Bishops (most notably conservative luminaries such as Joseph Strickland and Athanasius Schneider) wrote an open letter to the Church calling upon the faithful to reject any COVID-19 vaccine that had any relationship, however implicit, with cells from aborted fetuses.  In doing so, these Bishops have crossed a line that should not be crossed:  they are openly siding against the Magisterium, and telling the faithful that the Magisterium is not to be trusted as a safe or reliable guide for Catholics.

First things first, let's give a brief understanding of what's going on here.  It is sometimes assumed that vaccines are reliant upon a steady stream of aborted children for testing and experimentation purposes.  This is not what's really going on.  Fr. Arnaud Selegny, FSSPX offers a pretty good explanation.  Now for those of you raising an eyebrow at citing the SSPX in regards to Church authority, the irony is noted for the record, yet the arguments presented are unassailable. If one is looking for a guide that explains to the lay Catholic what the controversy is, and what moral principles guide this controversy, there is none better.

Human Embryonic Lines
Among the latter, there are currently at least three lines that originated from an abortion: the HEK-293 line, from a fetus aborted in 1972 in the Netherlands; the MRC-5 line, from a fetus aborted in 1966 in England, and the line Per.C6, from an aborted fetus in the Netherlands in 1985.

 

The use of cells from aborted fetuses to produce vaccines has therefore been going on since the 1960s, and has already led to the development of various vaccines, such as those that prevent rubella, chickenpox, hepatitis A and shingles.

This has led to a difficulty for Catholics.  Abortion is an evil in society so grave it has no other comparison.  Catholics should oppose abortion as much as humanly possible.  Does that mean we must then reject these vaccines because they had a tangential link to an abortion several decades ago?

The Magisterium has waded in on this issue twice.  While "The Magisterium" is often misused, The Pontifical Academy for Life and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, both responding to official inquiries on this question, these statements clearly have more authority than your average press release or homily.  I'm just going to give brief quotes from both documents.  Both are serious attempts to grapple with a real problem, and their position is by no means unqualified.  There are conditions under which these vaccines can be administered, but those conditions are real.  The Pontifical Academy for Life said the following

As regards the diseases against which there are no alternative vaccines which are available and ethically acceptable, it is right to abstain from using these vaccines if it can be done without causing children, and indirectly the population as a whole, to undergo significant risks to their health. However, if the latter are exposed to considerable dangers to their health, vaccines with moral problems pertaining to them may also be used on a temporary basis.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was even more explicit:

Of course, within this general picture there exist differing degrees of responsibility. Grave reasons may be morally proportionate to justify the use of such “biological material”. Thus, for example, danger to the health of children could permit parents to use a vaccine which was developed using cell lines of illicit origin, while keeping in mind that everyone has the duty to make known their disagreement and to ask that their healthcare system make other types of vaccines available. Moreover, in organizations where cell lines of illicit origin are being utilized, the responsibility of those who make the decision to use them is not the same as that of those who have no voice in such a decision.

The Bishops Open Letter makes note of these sources, but does not quote them.  If they quoted them, they would not be able to state the following:

However, this principle can hardly be applied to the case of vaccines made from foetal cell lines, because those who knowingly and voluntarily receive such vaccines enter into a kind of concatenation, albeit very remote, with the process of the abortion industry.

The Vatican has indeed said that this principle can be applied to vaccines.  They did not say it must be applied to vaccines, only that it can by the faithful, who are called to discern the issue properly.  Now I am not a moral theologian, so I will not wade too deeply into discussions about material cooperation with evil.  The SSPX document and the two documents above discuss the issue.  

Fortunately, you do not need a degree in moral theology to grasp this issue.  The Church has said these vaccines may be used.  That usage is not unconditional, we must do what we can to use vaccines that are not derived from the cells of aborted fetuses.  As there are 24 different vaccines (and growing!) at various stages of development, the development of these vaccines without these moral quandaries will be easier over time.  Given the nature of the pandemic currently, this seems like a pretty open and shut case of "temporary" usage described.  Following these principles of moral theology and guidelines from Rome, various conferences have approved these vaccines.

What do these Bishops have to say in their open letter of Rome's approval, and the bishops adopting in good faith Rome's approval?

Some churchmen in our day reassure the faithful by affirming that receiving a Covid-19 vaccine derived from the cell lines of an aborted child is morally licit if an alternative is not available. They justify their assertion on the basis of “material and remote cooperation” with evil. Such affirmations are extremely anti-pastoral and counterproductive, especially when one considers the increasingly apocalyptic character of the abortion industry, and the inhuman nature of some biomedical research and embryonic technology.

Some have said this is akin to what liberals did with contraception, casting aside the Magisterium for "pastoral" reasons.  I think that takes it too far.  Contraception is something for which there is always a moral evil involved when one intends to disrupt fertility and prevent a pregnancy through artificial means.  One can never use contraception for such a purpose.  Whereas the Church does not say one must be vaccinated with vaccines developed from embryonic lines stemming from abortion.  However it is wrong in the sense that these Bishops are stating that the pronouncements of the Church are not sufficiently pastoral.  In this they are setting up "pastoral" and "theological" on differing poles.

We have seen this line of argumentation do grave damage to the Church over the past few decades, especially during the pontificate of Francis.  It is bad enough when lay faithful adopt this mentality.  It is even worse when Bishops adopt it.  When speaking in their role as a bishop, bishops should be mindful that Joseph Strickland does not speak as himself.  He speaks as a successor to the Apostles, and shepherd of souls in union with the Roman Pontiff.  You certainly aren't required to like him or even think very highly of him, but he is the head of the Church, as were his predecessors whose memory God has charged him to uphold.  Bishops have an even greater duty to make sure everything they do upholds that which the Magisterium has presented.

These Bishops should immediately be asked if one sins by taking a vaccine that came from these circumstances, and if so, how that squares with the judgement of the Magisterium.  Given the choice, always choose the Magisterium, even if these bishops do praiseworthy things elsewhere.

The Sword of Damocles over the Vatican Clears the Mind

In wake of the PA Grand Jury report detailing extensive sexual abuse and coverup by Church authorities, Catholics everywhere asked what the bishops would do about it.  Crux's Charles Collins had what I think was the best take on the matter:  it doesn't matter what the Bishops are going to do.  We've reached a point where the bishops no longer have the power or legitimacy to enact reform, and now the state will do it for them.  

We're likely to learn the extent of those reforms in 2021/2022 when a lot of those investigations conclude.  Yet its a smart point.  The Old Testament is full of instances where God, frustrated by Israel's refusal to listen and repent, forces the change he desires through other means, namely the armies of Assyria and then Babylon and finally Rome.  Church state relations throughout history have been invariably complex, but there's several situations like that Otto the Great found himself in, to where he felt the need to carry out much needed Church reforms Rome was either unwilling or incapable of carrying out on their own.

I'm reminded of this today in light of the latest round of reforms Pope Francis has launched to try and clean up the financial filth that has existed for some time in Rome, and which has basically had a field day the entirety of his pontificate.  In addition to these reforms, he has unveiled sweeping transparency reforms, as well as effectively abandoning the reform of the Roman Curia that gave the Secretariat of State unrivaled power in the modern Church, after said office had defended and protected a lot of corrupt individuals.  Almost all of these reforms were reforms he rejected earlier, sometimes forcefully, and almost always accusing those advocating precisely these reforms as acting in bad faith.  What changed?

Maybe the Pope has had a change of heart, and has seen the error of his ways.  Or, more likely, he has taken the threats of the global financial community seriously.  Numerous international institutions have threatened to effectively blacklist the Vatican from engaging in international banking because of their practices.  Being cutoff from that banking also means being cut off from the various mechanisms of servicing debt, paying off loans, and being able to get money where its needed throughout the world with ease.  As the article points out, Moneyval has made clear the time for voluntary change has passed.  Rome can change.... or else.

Arguing over the soundness of this approach is besides the point.  Yes, there is a lot of inherent potential for abuse in a system where the Church and Pope is bullied, often against their will, into making reforms.  The time for avoiding that situation was in 2013 when Francis first ascended to the throne, and had a chance at being a real reformer.  He was instead focused on being a media darling and igniting a civil war at the Synod on the Family.  The media charm offensive of tickling the ears of secular people everywhere that 'this pope is different' hasn't really produced anything of long term value, and the two synods on the family were abysmal catastrophes with regard to Church unity and papal authority.  Meanwhile, we lost a crucial chance to carry out much needed reforms.

These reforms will now be carried out under force.  It will be a great irony if Francis ends up doing down as a reforming pope who set the Church on sound footing, doing the right thing after exhausting every single opportunity to do otherwise.  Yet its an irony we should hope for nonetheless.

The USCCB: What's the Point?

So the USCCB is having their annual meeting, conducted online this year because of the pandemic.  As I watch some of the highlights and read the commentary, I'm left asking a question:  Why are we doing this?  I don't mean doing it virtually because of the pandemic.  I mean:  why does the USCCB exist?

This sounds like a flippant question, but it isn't.  What is the point of the USCCB?  Why do they exist?  What are they hoping to accomplish?  To drive home the point further:  if the USCCB disbanded today, at this very moment, what would we find lacking?

So far as I can tell, the USCCB, as currently setup, exists to do three things.  They are to be pundits, to promote factional warfare, and to form committees.  This came out with the greatest clarity during the discussion around The McCarrick report.  If all you knew about the report was what you heard at the USCCB, you would think the report was a debate between the legacies of the three Popes McCarrick served under.  So a report that detailed a decades long institutional coverup of criminal sexual assault was reduced to the rather pathetic dueling arguments over some bishops thinking Francis should resign, or if the media is unfair to the legacy of John Paul II.  There is a lot of talk about "seeing through the eyes of victims", but nothing about various policies they could put in place to make this a reality.  Cardinal Gregory talks about the importance of showing victims we get it, but he sits on all the information that details the American Churches own institutional knowledge of McCarricks predations, and refuses to do anything to release it.  The bishops never once discussed how it was possible for such a monster to become so powerful and walk among their ranks, and no discussion about what steps they were taking as a body to prevent a future McCarrick from doing this kind of damage again.  Instead it was an argument over which pope deserves more blame.  That's an argument you should read on the internet, if you should read it at all.

Likewise, on the coronavirus pandemic, there was a lot of talk about the importance of getting people back to Church, yet nothing about why people are so reluctant to return.  Is it a question of safety?  Then what extra precautions are we taking?  Is it because people felt abandoned during the pandemic?  How are we fixing that?  Is it because of the corruption in the Church?  What are we doing to fix that?  Has the faith stopped becoming relevant for so many who before were going to Mass?  Instead, we're talking about holding special "bring your friend to Mass" days

This is not an ideological talking point, ie the bishops aren't trad enough, aren't progressive enough, whatever.  Nor is this a belief that things like a Committee on Racism are pointless.  There's a lot to discuss about the history of how the Church has navigated racial tensions across the world and in our own backyard, and yes, how that navigation has been poor or imperfect.  We should have nothing to fear from that.  Yet what exactly is done by the USCCB that makes it serve a singular and unique purpose?  If it's really just "its a high profile chance to discuss these issues" then maybe we really should rethink the entire premise upon which these episcopal conferences exist and function.

To the Tiber With All of Them

Note:  The following contains very angry language, because anger about this issue is important.

Yesterday, Rome finally released their "McCarrick Report", or, if you prefer a "Report on the Holy See's Institutional Knowledge and Decision Making Process Related to Former Cardinal Theodore Edgar McCarrick."  I already said what I thought the report would outline, and I was mostly right.  If Rome thought the report would answer these questions, they were mistaken.  Fr. Ryan Hilderbrand listed almost 30 questions he had about the report that Rome doesn't answer.  

There is a lot to the report, but I think we can focus on a few overall points

Benign Neglect or Active Indifference?

The first is that there was a narrative that McCarrick, ever the cunning schemer, was able to hide everything from Rome.  This has turned out to be 100% false.  Rome was well aware of allegations regarding McCarrick, having received up to 4 different allegations of abuse, violation of boundaries, or inappropriate behavior on behalf of the Cardinal by the time action was finally taken against him.  How did he then rise up the ranks despite all this being known?  

I think the best explanation is that nobody wanted to look really closely what was going on, because if they looked they knew they were going to find something.  Its like the person who knows their spouse is being unfaithful, or they know their spouse has a drinking problem.  They go out of their way to avoid seeing all the warning signs that would force them to take action.  Theodore McCarrick was charismatic, a smart politician, and a prodigious fundraiser.  Just like Marcel Maicel, he wasn't particularly subtle with hiding his abuse.  There was just overwhelming incentives to not look too closely.  If you aren't looking closely, you don't have to look the other way at wrongdoing.

This was combined with an active weaponization of the Church against opposition to McCarrick.  For example, when McCarrick was promoted to the Archdiocese of Washington, an investigation was conducted regarding abuse, but it was an investigation to be conducted "without urgency."  Yet this investigation was completed, and alongside numerous other pieces of evidence, it was suggested that McCarrick not be transferred to another see.  One can take the at face reasons listed, but another way of looking at it was it was believed promoting McCarrick to a higher position would bring about greater visibility.  This suggestion was ignored by the Pope who then bypassed the normal process of consulting the Congregation of Bishops and the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.  (Then Josef Ratzinger, the future Benedict XVI who punished McCarrick.)  You engage in this type of bypass because you don't want anyone looking too closely at the situation.

The Bureaucratization of Abuse

One of the striking features of the report, as well as the evidence contained therein, is how bureaucratic it is.  At no point does one detect a sense of anger or outrage at McCarrick, either over his crimes, or over having been deceived.  One could even be forgiven individuals believe a crime was committed here.  There are jokes and light hearted banter mentioned, a warm comity and rapport with everyone involved.  Even McCarrick's enemies (and they do make appearances in this report) seem more troubled by the extra paperwork this unfortunate set of events generates.  It suggests that, far from this being an isolated incident, these kind of abuse investigation and rumors regarding senior prelates seem strikingly common, to the point where its impact seems fairly trivial in the proceedings.  Maybe this just the soulless boardroom mentality seeping into the Church.  Or maybe it points to a striking frequency of these allegations.  Either way, it is something deeply troubling.  As always here, the protection of the institution matters above all else.  A primacy of attention is given to if McCarrick's indiscretions and allegations would impact a papal trip, rather than terrify and scandalize the flock he governed.

The Complication of Papal Legacies

Make no mistake, this report is a haymaker to the face of Pope John Paul II's legacy.  If he were not already canonized, there would not be a snowballs chance in hell he would be canonized.  From a doctrinal standpoint, this does not invalidate his canonization.  Saints can have serious blindspots, they can be gullible, be deceived, and they can make catastrophic mistakes.  Sometimes you could even say understanding those mistakes is essential to understanding the saint in question.  Yet let us not kid ourselves: this is going to impact the legacy of John Paul II negatively for centuries, and it should.  Benedict is less Der Panzerkardinal and more a weak and ineffectual man, who takes half measures because taking full measures would torch the legacy of his yet uncanonized predecessor he owed his career to and damage the institution's reputation he spent decades trying to uphold.  It is the dark side of institutionalism.

Axing the Final Chapter

One could ask how this reflects upon Pope Francis, but he is largely absent in this story.  For all intents and purposes, the McCarrick saga ends in 2009, with a brief epilogue in 2017 where WHOOPS TURNS OUT MCCARICK IS A PEDOPHILE HOLY CRAP GUYS WHAT DO WE DO?  At this point everyone puts on their shocked face and expresses disbelief that the guy they had under "prescript" (where he is forced to only live in certain areas, restricted from doing almost everything but don't you dare call it a "punishment" or "sentence") for borderline consensual/nonconsensual sexual activity engaged in nonconsensual sexual activity, and oops, turns out those rumors we've heard for decades about abusing minors were true, who woulda guessed?  Though they admit McCarrick gave advice that various individuals be appointed bishops and to other Vatican organizations, and that he gave people a lot of monetary gifts impossible to trace since it was cash, we swear this activity had no influence on anything.  They aren't trying to convince us of that fact, they're practicing their defense when they appear before Christ at the Judgement Seat.  He will be as impressed by it as we are.

A Very Online Report

The report seems written less to explain McCarrick's rise than it is to take sides in various factional disputes within the Church.  Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano is a frequent antagonist in the report.  Vigano was the man whose whistle blowing testimony forced McCarrick to be laicized and forced the eventual publishing of this report.   One should readily grant whistleblowers are not ideal figures.  They are normally vain corrupt individuals who have been double crossed by someone more vain and corrupt.  That's what happened here.  In an attempt to mollify his base being angry over a papal trip to America, Francis pinned everything that went poorly on Vigano, and told everyone he fired him to try and generate good PR with his biggest fans.  (In truth, he resigned as was customary, without prompting from the Holy Father.)  Vigano, always a man to treat the slightest provocation as a declaration of holy war, waited until the perfect moment to exact his revenge, and the McCarrick scandal was that perfect moment.  So the report looks to portray him in as bad a light as possible, such as faulting him for not examining how much legal liability they would have from McCarrick's indiscretions after he was forcibly restricted from ministry.  (Note not whether or not the charges were true, Rome had a pretty good idea they were.  Just how much legal liability this threatened to ensnare everyone in.)

Now if this seems very inside basbeall:  no kidding.  The average Catholic does not give a damn about any of this, much less people outside the Church.  Yet the report is filled with these little anectdotes of factional bloodfeuds.  This wasn't written to shed light on a situation. This was written to provide a narrative for one side of a bitter factional struggle in the Church to present as a way to justify everything that has happened up until now.  The various debates about various personalities might rage on twitter, but all anyone else will see is "sure looks like the past three popes knew one of their senior advisors was a sexual abuser and moved heaven and earth to avoid doing anything about it."

Will He Find Faith?

Christ asks "When the Son of Man returns, will He find faith?"  I thought about that a lot lately.  We spend a lot of time in today's Church about who is more faithful to her traditions, to her doctrine.  Critics of traditionalism complain of a Catholicism that is "More Catholic than the Pope."  I think this is the wrong way of looking at it.  There's something for everyone in this report.  We see some very casual misogyny.  We see liberals acting bad.  Conservatives acting bad.  Everyone of every ideological persuasion uniting to make sure nobody has to look too hard at what McCarrick is doing.  All of these people are baptized Catholics.  Yet we have to ask:  do any of them have faith in God?  Do any of these people have a relationship with Christ?  Or is the Catholic Church just a book of the month club, where the doctrinal debates are over which list of books gets promoted by the group?  While the Pope has criticized this mentality in the past, it's clear that its accelerated under his watch.  For all the talk of the importance of Jesus, one has to ask where Jesus fits into their understanding of how McCarrick was treated in the Church.  How often did they think about pleasing and serving Jesus when they deliberated over what to do?  The McCarrick saga is a case of the Vatican under the past three popes losing the plot.

Barring penance and confession, anyone involved in this sordid affair, from the bottom to the top, should be denied a Catholic burial.  That's the charitable solution.  Otherwise, let God cast them down from their roles, and after a lifetime of penance, let them be cast into the Tiber.

The Isolation of Pope Francis

 While Americans have been paying attention to the political election season, events in the Catholic Church have moved very fast, and are moving faster still.  In the last two months we have seen:

- The Pope drove his former Number 2 (Cardinal Angelo Becciu) out of respectable Church life

- Several criminal investigations are revealed or started involving senior Vatican officials and financial officials regarding financial transactions Becciu had control over.  If you believe Becciu, these deals were done with the knowledge and blessing of the Pope.  (whatever that may or may not entail.)

- The Pope released an instruction regarding who can start religious communities, in yet another shot across the bow at the German Church that he is getting a little fed up with their years of rebellion.

- The Pope took punitive steps against an elderly Polish Bishop credibly accused of abuse, in what is almost certainly not going to be the last in that country.

- In a dramatic reversal of fortune, the Pope kinda blew up his curial reform this week, by defanging a lot of the power in his own Secretariat of State.  Its immense financial control (that was meant to go with other sweeping powers) was greatly reduced, as the Pope largely adopted the same reforms that Cardinal Pell proposed (and he rejected) in 2013, a process that began Pell's ouster in the game of court intrigue in the Vatican. The Secretariat of State was long seen as Becciu's primary protector, and rumors swirl that Becciu acted in concert with him on many of those arrangements now under question.

- The Vatican has announced it will finally be releasing the long awaited "McCarrick" report, or, if you prefer the soulless bureaucratic legalese typical of the Vatican, the  "Report on the Holy See’s institutional knowledge and decision-making process related to former Cardinal Theodore Edgar McCarrick."

There will be a lot of discussion about what each of these individuals moves do and don't mean.  What I'd like to propose is that they point to an increasingly isolated Pope, a man who, after years, is being forced to take actions he has stubbornly refused to do, because he now has no choice.  The first myth to dispel is that this is business as usual.  Something is clearly on the horizon, something the Pope is desperately trying to get out in front of and manage.

The various financial scandals are almost entirely his own fault.  It must be noted, Cardinal Pell outlined a series of reforms to prevent precisely the situation the Pope currently finds himself in.  Pell examined a financial system that was ripe for corruption and abuse.  He proposed a series of reforms that would greatly reduce that risk.  The Pope rejected those reforms, and then sidelined Pell.  This was before Pell's accusation, conviction, and then reversal regarding sexual abuse.  The Vatican's ability to participate in international finance with ease is now at risk, requiring these reforms which feel less like part of an overall plan, and more a panicked emergency response.

The situation with Germany is again mostly of his own doing.  While Rome and Germany have been in tension the last several decades, they believed Francis was going to be the pope who helped them accomplish a revolution.  The Pope, at best playing politics, took no steps to discourage that thinking, and encouraged quite a bit of it.  He now finds himself unable to put that genie back in the bottle.  The Germans feel, not without merit, that Francis owes them his pontificate.  Francis feels, not without merit, that he is the Bishop of Rome, and nobody's puppet.  The Pope could have put a stop to this earlier with decisive action.  Now that window for action has passed, and he's mostly engaging in a desperate series of interventions and emergency instructions, trying to keep the situation from Germany erupting into a full blown schism.

Finally, the issues of sexual abuse, and Theodore McCarrick in particular, are again his own fault.  McCarrick was quietly forced out of public ministry by Pope Benedict, and placed under what amounted to a permanent interdict as punishment for his canonical crimes.  A punishment Francis unmistakably lifted, even if it is believed for a good reason.  The Pope honestly probably reasoned McCarrick was an old man whose ability to harm the Church was passed, and besides, he could use McCarrick to craft the greatest legacy of any pope in centuries:  a deal with China.  That, like everything else, blew up in his face.  While the case of McCarrick casts a rather poor light on the last two pontificates, it is no doubt a black eye on Francis, especially since he denied any knowledge of the abuse (a claim nobody believes and something he will almost certainly have to walk back, at least implicitly, this week), and allowed it to be perpetuated by his courtiers (chief among them the head of the Congregation of Bishops) that McCarrick wasn't even actually suspended for abuse, something he knew was a lie.

The revelation of McCarrick's abuse was always going to be a scandal.  Yet they could have pointed to McCarrick's suspension from ministry, his forced exile from public life, and the Pope's desire to continue to enforce those decrees, except for the fact Pope Francis himself intervened to end that.  Nobody believes McCarrick would travel around the world after all those years of exile without Rome's knowledge, blessing, and invitation.  It is almost certain that the report released this week will avoid answering the hard questions about the Pope's knowledge complicity in this whole affair.  To the extent he is forced to accept blame, he will no doubt deflect it upon others as much as possible, as any leader would do in a crisis.  Yet this report is again being released because Francis has no choice.  It would have to be released eventually, and dioceses in America are rapidly going bankrupt.  Withholding accountability on McCarrick, even a half-hearted accountability, is not sustainable for the long run.

All of this points to the isolation the Pope currently finds himself in.  He is isolated on potential moves he can make.  He has been attempting to manage each of these crises the past several years, and has failed to manage all three.  Leadership that would have been welcomed at first is now almost certainly viewed as desperation.  The allies he has have also been substantially reduced.  Due to the fact he is still Pope, he will not have many open critics in the clergy.  Yet he has fewer and fewer defenders, and that list shrinks by the day.

I write this not with a sense of glee, but of sadness, and a bit of sympathy for the Pope.  I firmly believe that, in healthier times, he would certainly not be a great pope, but he would not be a terrible one either.  Yet we do not live in healthier times.  We also have a pandemic raging through the Church, one in which he has managed quite well so far, all things expected.  Its going to be increasingly hard to effectively stand up for the pastoral care of souls during this pandemic, a cause Francis has made dear to his heart.  It will be difficult mostly because he himself has made it difficult.

This is why prayer for the Holy Father is necessary, even more so this coming week.  His role in his own ensnarement is true enough, but we can all think of a time where we caused a bad situation to rapidly deteriorate, and the weight it put on us.  Now multiply that weight by the spiritual care of a billion souls.  Maybe now, at this late hour, the Pope will make the turn he should have made at the beginning:  to the Lord in prayer, that He give him the courage to carry out, even at this late hour, what is necessary.

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.

Should we "Bother" with the Crisis?

 I know my return to blogging is for real because I now can never finish what I set out to do.  I have 3 or 4 grand ideas I want to write about, but things keep getting in the way.  I want to write about the Trumpist temptation of traditionalism.  I want to write a general overview of what I think are the main camps in the Church today.  Yet, in true blogging fashion, something else comes along, and I lose my train of thought.  Yet I think it's something that's really worth talking about.

I was given this opportunity by one Jeff Culbreath in a discussion on Twitter.  Now for those who have been in the trad world for awhile, Jeff is an old name.  Indeed, one of the original traditionalists who took up blogging.  In one form or another, Jeff has been going at this for 2-3 decades now.  I bring this up because I don't want to give the idea that Jeff is some Johnny come lately who doesn't understand the struggle.  He's lived it, he's taken arrows, and he's done a lot of great work, and most of it not in his writing.  So what did he say?

Most Catholics have no business bothering themselves with "The crisis".  Sometimes i wonder if my fellow eggheads online know any real Catholics in the pews.

I know a lot of good people, who have done a lot of good, to traditionalism and the Church as a whole, who hold this idea.  This idea is still wrong in just about every way.  Yet let's first talk about the one way in which it is right.  There is a certain danger in obsessing over the latest scandal de jure or news from a far away land in the Vatican.  Especially when it's done as a form of entertainment online.  That isn't productive, and its ruined countless souls. To the extent this is what one means, then that is correct.

Yet it's wrong every other way.  First is the idea that there is such a thing as a "real Catholic", opposed from the "fake Catholic", and said "fake Catholic" always seems to hold views you disagree with.  It has in common more with political revolutionary movements that seek to purge the impious from their ranks, even if the impious held ideas that five minutes ago were perfectly normal and acceptable.  So let us speak bluntly:  if you are baptized validly, you are a "real Catholic."  Even a Catholic under punishment is still a "real Catholic."  The idea that only "real Catholics" care about things that matter is not only false, it's also telling on yourself.  You've decided, on your own authority, to say what a real Catholic is and is not.  If the Pope and Magisterium say something different, well, who cares what they think?

Second is the idea that "real Catholics" are immune from struggling with certain things, and we shouldn't talk about those struggles, because they aren't becoming of "real Catholics."  This, again, is nonsense.  Catholics are just like everybody else.  We have a lot going for us, and we've got a lot going against us.  If we writers are going to do anything, it should be to talk about Catholicism as it actually exists in the world, not how we wish it would exist.  Sometimes that involves a lot of people angry and upset, even if that anger and sorrow is misdirected.  That's just as much a valid part of the Catholic experience as some boring commentary on the seven sorrowful mysteries that nobody actually reads, but everyone acts like it "matters."  I actually think Catholics need to speak about that stuff more, but that's for another time.

Third is it gets the point about "bothering themselves with the crisis" completely backwards.  The crisis will bother you, whether you want it to or not.  When we are part of a church facing a financial and demographic cliff even before a pandemic, and what that means, that is the crisis.  When you can't get a priest for your mass due to a vocations shortage of cataclysmic proportions that was ignored for decades, that is the crisis.  Yet let us put a more human touch on the matter.

I know an individual who was a weekly Mass goer, in a family of people who mostly stopped going, or didn't really believe.  Yet this individual had a "problem":  she was gay.  Now she had nobody who could give her guidance on how to live with that, outside of the double sins of homophobia and the belief that there really wasn't a difference between homosexuality and heterosexuality.  She got engaged to someone she was dating, and then her partner lost her position in parish ministry, once the reality of Church teaching entered reality.  All of this took her completely by surprise, because nobody ever wanted to address this topic honestly, because its extremely messy.  Now she's estranged from the Church (during the pandemic, she has stayed away from mass, and continues to do so now that the obligation has returned), and the familial bonds are frayed because the family had no clue how to address this from a Catholic perspective either.

Now while this is a composite person, this is no doubt what a lot of "real Catholics" are going through.  That is the fruit of the crisis.  Not everyone has the option of retreating from the world and only hanging out with people who have no struggles.  Honestly, many of us wouldn't even go to that if we could.  That's not where we feel called.

Finally its a belief that if we don't talk about something, its not real, or it doesn't matter.  This places way too much stock in our own feelings and beliefs, and it shows a pretty callous indifference to those who *are* struggling.  An indifference that is not Christianity.  Now you might not feel called to address that.  Yet there are others who want to,  and we should be helping those individuals do so.  I can tell you this:  a lot of the people I discuss the crisis and the faith with aren't Catholics at Mass every Sunday.  They are those fallen away, those who were never Catholic, and they genuinely want to know how on earth I manage to stay Catholic, and why I even want to be Catholic.  I'll tell you something: I love telling them those reasons and that story, and it never gets old, and it never ceases to resonate with them.  They aren't going to convert over that, but I've used the crisis to give them a bit of hope about God.

There is no running from the crisis we face.  We will be bothered by it.  So we might as well bother it back.  What matters is how we bother it back.  Different people will do so in different ways, and those ways will change over time.  Spending too much time dealing with it one way is never healthy, as it needs to be informed by events, situations, circumstances, state in life, etc.  A new convert will react to the crisis a lot differently than someone who has been there for decades.  

There's also something a bit insidious about this suggestion that "Real Catholics" shouldn't "bother themselves" with the crisis when it involves actions of the hierarchy or the ordained.  This reaction itself is a reaction molded by the crisis, and deserves its own treatment, but we've spoken enough today.  Put this down on the list of ideas I swear I'll get to eventually.  For the 100 or so readers, you've stuck with me long enough over the years, you know I come around.