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OnePeterFive, founded by Mr. Steve Skojec and currently edited
by Mr. Timothy Flanders, is a conservative Catholic web site with traditional
Catholic sentiments and intellectual sympathies, however it remains in its
fundamental first principles a conservative publishing forum. Its hope is to
unite various conservative and traditional Catholic groups against the current
Vatican corruption of Catholic faith, morals and worship under Pope Francis the
Philistine. The problem is that Mr. Flanders does not know the essential difference between a
conservative and a traditional Catholic. That being said, it explains why the
web site does not permit reader comments on its published articles.
Conservative Catholics cannot weather the criticism from Traditional Catholics.
OnePeterFive has over the last three months (June through August 2022) published a
series of articles by conservative Catholics defending the political theory of
Catholic Ultramontanism which in its current
ideological expression is grounded upon the false belief that the pope is the
proximate rule of faith for all Catholics. This is a grave error. The proximate rule of faith
for all Catholics is DOGMA. All Catholics are subject to God's revealed TRUTH
and God's revealed TRUTH is the only weapon possessed by faithful Catholics
against an abuse of authority.
The three articles in question are:
Defending Ultramontanism
by Mr. José
Antonio Ureta, June 20, 2022
Ultramontanists: Godfathers
of the Trad Movement by Professor
Roberto de Mattei, July 28, 2022
Against Traditionalist Neo-Gallicanism by Mr. Luiz Sérgio Solimeo,
August 25, 2022
The most important of these three
articles is by Roberto de Mattei who is a well known
conservative Catholic historian. He may or may not be a member of Tradition
Family and Property (TFP) but he is a great admirer and long time supporter of
Dr. Plinio
Corrêa de
Oliveira, the founder of the
TFP. The other two articles are written
by members of the TFP. The general theme of the articles is the same. The three
authors may not be necessarily working in concert but the suspicion that they
are is justifiable. The purpose of these three articles defending Untramontanism is ultimately to attack Archbishop Carlo
Maria Viganò who began as a conservative but has
developed into a true defender of the Catholic faith and tradition. Archbishop
Carlo Maria Viganò has concluded that Vatican II
council must be completely discarded and its Novus Ordo
worship condemned. These are of course fighting words against the heresy of
Neo-modernism that cause conservative Catholics to recoil in fear. These
articles are an attempt to undermine Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò's
influence among conservative Catholics. Willingly or not, Mr. Flanders has
become an abettor of this grave error and which he will not retract or correct.
Suffice to say, no saint in the history of the Catholic Church has ever come
from the ranks of conservative Catholicism!
The
following article was submitted to OnePeterFive on
August 3, 2022 for publication but was refused by Mr. Timothy Flanders because
“it is not written in the spirit or letter of (1P5’s) editorial stance but
rather contrary to it.” It was “contrary to it” because it “used the term ‘conservative’ as
a weaponised label against allies in the Traditional
movement.” Mr. Flanders is a conservative Catholic who is clueless
regarding the essential difference between
a conservative Catholic and a traditional Catholic and thus neither knows
himself nor his enemy. It is not liberal Catholics who are responsible for the
desecration of the Church since Vatican II but conservative Catholics who have
refused to defend her.
The
article below is a specific reply to Dr. de Mattei
because, 1) he is the only influential member of the group and 2) his article
directly professes in unequivocal language the grave error that pope stands
above DOGMA.
Dogma is the Proximate Rule of Faith:
A Reply to Roberto de Mattei
Roberto de Mattei’s
article, “Ultramontanists: Godfathers of the Trad
Movement,” is an attempt to claim the mantle of
Catholic tradition (“Trad Movement”) for “ultramontanists” against false traditional “neo-Gallicanians” who come in two varieties: the German “synodalists” and the “neo-traditionalists, especially from
the Anglo-Saxon area.” This argument is developed from two quotations defended
by Dr. de Mattei. The first is an undocumented
attribution to Pope Pius IX and the second is taken from Joseph de Maistre.
“I am Tradition.”
Blessed
Pius IX, unknown attribution
“If it were permitted to establish
degrees of importance among things of divine institution, I would place
hierarchy before dogma, so indispensable is it to the maintenance of the
faith.”
Joseph de Maistre,
“Lettre à une dame russe sur la nature et les effets du schisme”
I will credit Dr. de Mattei for
identifying the essential problem but not for its clear exposition or the right
conclusion. He does provide needed qualifications to these quotations but
accepts them essentially true as written. Both quotations are serious errors
and there can be no defense of the Catholic faith unless corrected.
The essential problem for Catholics
since Vatican II has been professing and defending the true faith. So, what is
faith and what constitutes the rules of faith to guide us? Faith is the
principle cause and sign of unity in the Church, for “without faith it is
impossible to please God.” De Mattei correctly says,
“Sacred Scripture and Tradition
constitute the remote norms of our faith,” but he then follows de Maistre's error and says, “the next regula
fidei (the proximate rule) is represented by the
teaching and judging authority of the Church, which has its apex with the
Pope. Hierarchy comes in this sense before dogma.” This is affirming that
the pope is the proximate rule of faith for the pope alone stands in potentia to the Church's Magisterium and the attribute
of infallibility. The first problem is that this is not
true. Dogma is the proximate rule of faith. It also obscures the fact that the
pope, the papacy and the Magisterium are all part of divine revelation and
therefore the proper subject matters of dogma. This error is a common error but
an error nonetheless. It is an error held by nearly all conservative Catholics,
Sedevacantists or Sedeprivationists,
and is unfortunately common error among traditional Catholics especially among
clerics formed in the SSPX. This error leads to many subsequent errors and
leaves the faithful Catholic defenseless because divine truth is the only
weapon against an abuse of authority.
The faith is believing what God has revealed on the authority of God the revealer.
If
anyone says that divine faith is not to be
distinguished from natural knowledge about God and moral matters, and consequently
that for divine faith it is not required that revealed truth should be
believed because of the authority of God who reveals it: let him be anathema
Vatican I
“This
faith, which is the beginning of human
salvation, the Catholic Church professes to be a supernatural virtue,
by means of which, with the grace of God inspiring and assisting us, we
believe to be true what He has revealed, not because we perceive its
intrinsic truth by the natural light of reason, but because of the authority
of God himself, who makes the revelation and can neither deceive nor be
deceived.”
Vatican I
God is both the formal cause of faith as
to what a Catholic believes and the why he believes it. The remote rule of
faith is divine revelation found in both Scripture and Tradition, the formal
object of divine faith. It should not surprise anyone to learn that
the proximate rule of faith is also divine revelation, that is, dogma,
which is divine revelation infallibly defined typically in the form of a
categorical proposition which constitutes the formal object of divine and Catholic faith.
“Wherefore, by divine and
catholic faith all those things are to be believed which are contained
in the word of God as found in scripture and tradition
(remote rule of faith), and which are proposed by the
church as matters to be believed as divinely revealed, whether
by her solemn judgment or in her ordinary and
universal magisterium” (proximate
rule of faith).
Vatican I
We know that Dogma is the proximate rule
of faith from reason, and from theological expositions on the nature of dogma,
and from the Magisterial authority of the Church. From reason we can conclude
Dogma is the proximate rule of faith from the canonical definition of heresy
which is taken almost verbatim from St. Thomas:
St.
Thomas (II-II: 11:1) defines heresy: “a species of infidelity in men who,
having professed the faith of Christ, corrupt its dogmas”. The right Christian faith consists in giving one's
voluntary assent to Christ in all that truly belongs to His teaching. There
are, therefore, two ways of deviating from Christianity: the one by refusing to
believe in Christ Himself, which is the way of infidelity, common to Pagans and
Jews; the other by restricting belief to certain points of Christ's doctrine
selected and fashioned at pleasure, which is the way of heretics. The
subject-matter of both faith and heresy is, therefore, the deposit of the
faith, that is, the sum total of truths revealed in Scripture and Tradition as
proposed to our belief by the Church.
Catholic Encyclopedia, 1907
Heresy is “the corruption of
dogmas” while “the right Christian faith consists in giving one's
voluntary assent to Christ in all that truly belongs to His (Christ's)
teaching.” These “teachings” are found in “the sum total of
truths revealed in Scripture and Tradition as proposed to our belief by the
Church.” What the Church, by her “teaching authority” (i.e.:
Magisterium) “proposes to our belief” is called Dogma. Those
who keep Dogmas and do not corrupt them are called the faithful, those who
do corrupt them are called heretics.
This difference represents a clear
division in the “Tree of Porphyry.” It is the division that establishes a
species from a genus. As the article points out, “The subject-matter of both
faith and heresy is, therefore, the deposit of the faith,” that is, “the
sum total of truths revealed in Scripture and Tradition as proposed to our
belief by the Church.” The species difference is that the heretic breaks
the rule of faith while the faithful keep it. This establishes that Dogma is
the rule of faith not by argument but by fact of an essential definition
which is the best of all definitions because it is the most intelligible. The
Magisterium is necessary but insufficient means by which we know Dogma,
but it is the Dogma itself which is known. It is the what
that we know and therefore the rule of faith. If you exchange the terms
“Magisterium,” or “hierarchy” or “pope” for Dogma, even though the they have
the same object, there cannot be a clear distinctive division because there
exists no species in the genus of Church's Magisterium, hierarchy or pope. As
Fr. Chad Ripperger, FSSP correctly said in his book, The
Binding Force of Tradition, “it is
not the Magisterium as such that is the rule of faith, but the definitions of
the Magisterium that are the rule.”
Every heretic who is reconciled to the
Church must make an abjuration of heresy and a profession of faith. The
profession of faith is the Creed which is essentially a litany of
dogmas. Ecumenical councils historically begin with the common recitation
of the Credo and an affirmation of
the dogmatic declarations of previous councils. What these ecumenical councils
are doing is affirming the Catholic faith by renewing its dogmatic canons, the
proximate rule of their faith. Directly cited at Vatican I Council was the
Fourth Council of Constantinople:
“So,
the fathers of the fourth council of Constantinople, following the
footsteps of their predecessors, published this solemn profession of faith: The first condition of salvation
is to maintain the rule of the true faith. And since that saying of
our lord Jesus Christ, You are Peter, and upon this
rock I will build my church, cannot fail of its effect, the words spoken are
confirmed by their consequences.”
Vatican I
The Council Fathers at the fourth council of Constantinople,
after affirming all the dogmatic canons of the each of the first seven
ecumenical councils individually said:
“If
we wish to proceed without offence along the true and royal road of divine
justice, we must keep the declarations and teachings of the holy fathers
as if they were so many lamps which are always alight and illuminating our
steps which are directed towards God. Therefore, considering and esteeming
these as a second word of God, in accordance with the great and most
wise Denis, let us sing most willingly along with the divinely inspired David,
The commandment of the Lord is bright, enlightening the eyes, and, Your word is
a lamp to my feet and a light to my paths; and with the author of Proverbs we
say, Your commandment is a lamp and your law a light, and like Isaiah we cry to
the lord God with loud voice, because your commands are a light for the earth.
For the exhortations and warnings of the divine canons are rightly likened to
light inasmuch as the better is distinguished from the worse and what is
advantageous and useful is distinguished from what is not helpful but harmful.
Therefore we declare that we are preserving and maintaining the canons
which have been entrusted to the holy, catholic and apostolic church by
the holy and renowned apostles, and by universal as well as local councils of
orthodox [bishops], and even by any inspired father or teacher of the church. Consequently,
we rule our own life and conduct by these canons and we decree that all those
who have the rank of priests and all those who are described by the name of
Christian are, by ecclesiastical law, included under the penalties and condemnations
as well as, on the other hand, the absolutions and acquittals which have been
imposed and defined by them.”
Fourth Council of Constantinople.
Here
we have the Church in council declaring that dogmatic canons are referred to as
“lamps which are always alight and
illuminating our steps which are directed towards God.” They are to
be “esteemed” as “a second word of God.” They are “canons which have been entrusted to the
Church” by the “apostles and the
councils.” Consequently, they are the “rule
(of) our own life and conduct by these canons.”
The Council of Florence said, “we offer to the envoys (of the Armenians)
that compendious rule of the faith composed by most blessed Athanasius,
which is as follows”:
Whoever wills to be saved, before all things it is necessary that he holds
the catholic faith. Unless a person keeps this faith whole and undefiled,
without doubt he shall perish eternally. The catholic faith is this,
...... Those who have done good shall go into eternal life, but those who
have done evil shall go into eternal fire.
This is the catholic faith. Unless a person believes it faithfully and
firmly, he cannot be saved.
Athanasian Creed
Pope
St. Pius X authoritatively taught:
“The
purpose of this is, then, not that dogma may be tailored according to
what seems better and more suited to the culture of each age; rather, that the
absolute and immutable truth preached by the apostles from the beginning may
never be believed to be different, may never be understood in any other way.”
Pope St. Pius X, Oath Against
Modernism
“The dogmas the Church holds out as
revealed are not truths
which have fallen from heaven. They are an interpretation of religious
facts which the human mind has acquired by laborious effort.” CONDEMNED
Pope
St. Pius X, Lamentabili,
22
Dogma as the proximate rule of faith is
affirmed by many theologians. For
example, Fr. Norbert Jones teaches clearly what dogma is:
Modernism
is condemned because it virtually destroys Christian dogma by denying that the
dogmas of faith are contained in the revelation made by the Holy Spirit to the
Catholic Church and subsequently defined through the supreme authority of the
same Ecclesia docens{1}. Once the
Holy Spirit, speaking through the supreme magisterium{2}
of the Church, defines a doctrine as de fide{3} the dogma in
question remains, both in se{4} and in its external formula
or terminology, unchanged and unchangeable, like God, Whose voice it communicates to us, in the shape of
definite truth. Modernism tells us quite the reverse.
1.
Ecclesia docens
-- i.e., 'the teaching Church.'
2.
Magisterium = 'teaching authority.'
3.
De
fide = 'what is of faith.'
4.
In
se = 'in itself.'
Rev.
Father Norbert Jones, C.R.L., Old Truths,
Not Modernist Errors, Exposure of Modernism and Vindication of its Condemnation
by the Pope, 1908, (footnotes in original)
The
Magisterium is the teacher, Dogma is what is taught. Dogma is then called
the “formal object of divine and Catholic faith” and as the rule of what we are
to believe. As Fr. Jones says, when the “supreme magisterium
of the Church, defines a doctrine as de fide the dogma in question
remains, both in se and in its external formula or terminology,
unchanged and unchangeable, like God, Whose voice
it communicates to us, in the shape of definite truth.”
Dogma communicates to us the 'voice
of God.' The claim that we must turn to the “living magisterium”
to interpret Dogma is ridiculous because Dogma is the interpretation of the
revealed doctrine by the divine Magisterium. To ask the “living magisterium” to explain Dogma is analogous to the Pharisees
demanding from Jesus a “sign” after He just performed a miracle. The
miracle itself is the sign and if that sign was unacceptable no other would be
given. Dogma is the whatness of our faith. The
proper understanding of dogma requires proper definition and grammar, not
theological competency. Dogma
does not admit theological or historical contextualization but stands on its
own as a revealed truth from God.
The causes of this error are not simply
an error of ultramontanists but follows from common
misunderstandings regarding the nature of the Church, the Magisterium, the pope
and his office, from muddled or equivocal definitions none of which are viewed
from the perspective of God and God's revealed truth, that is, the perspective
of dogma.
Authority, Infallibility and
Indefectibility are divine attributes. The Church is founded by God; Jesus
called it “His Church.” The Church is a divine institution and therefore
possesses these divine attributes. The attributes are powers that permit the
Church to accomplish its purpose. St.
Pius X says in Pascendi:
“Every
society needs a directing authority to guide its members toward the common end,
to foster prudently the elements of cohesion, which in a religious society are
doctrine and worship; hence, the triple authority in the Catholic Church, disciplinary,
dogmatic and liturgical” (emphasis his).
This “triple
authority” corresponds respectively to the three-fold divine attributes God
has endowed His Church: authority, infallibility, and indefectibility.
The purpose of the “directing authority” (i.e., disciplinary) requires the
attribute of Authority to direct the Church “toward the common end”
which are “doctrine” (dogmatic) requiring the attribute of Infallibility,
and “worship” and the sanctification of the faithful (liturgical) requiring the
attribute of Indefectibility. The exercise of “authority” outside of
these ends, or in opposition to these ends, cannot be done with any legitimacy
because it cannot be an act of reason. No Catholic can morally give obedience
to any law, command, directive, or any exercise of authority that harms the
faith or leads to the loss of salvation of souls.
Suffice to say, Infallibility is
primarily and essentially an attribute of the Church. It is an attribute of the
pope only accidentally and secondarily in the function of his office under
specifically defined conditions for specifically defined ends. We know those
conditions and ends from the dogma defined at Vatican Council I. We also know
from dogma defined at Vatican I that the Magisterium is the teaching office of
the Church that teaches truth without the possibility of error. Only the pope
stands in potentia to the Magisterium
and whenever the Magisterium is engaged in actus,
it is one and the same Magisterium for every pope from St. Peter to the present
day. When the pope teaches by virtue of his grace of state, that is, by his
personal magisterium, he is worthy to be heard with
respect by virtue of his exalted office but if he should say or do anything
that is directly or indirectly against dogma he must be “withstood to the
face.” He cannot be followed for we must “obey God rather than man.”
The pope is not the proximate rule of
faith. He is the essential but insufficient material and instrumental cause of
dogma because he alone stands in potentia to
the Magisterial powers of the Church. It is the dogma that is divine revelation
that constitutes the proximate rule. To claim that the pope is the proximate
rule reduces dogma to a human approximation of divine truth that must be
perpetually revised in light of development by a “living magisterium”
which progressively distills the revealed truth from human accretions while
never reaching its term, or an even worse error, making the divine attributes
of the Church the personal attributes of the pope which is a form of
idolatry.
How should the term “living magisterium” be understood?
Wherefore,
as appears from what has been said, Christ instituted in the Church a living,
authoritative and permanent Magisterium, which by His own power
He strengthened, by the Spirit of truth He taught, and by miracles confirmed. He willed and ordered, under the gravest penalties, that
its teachings should be received as if they were His own. As often,
therefore, as it is declared on the authority of this teaching that this or
that is contained in the deposit of divine revelation, it must be believed by every
one as true. If
it could in any way be false, an evident contradiction follows; for then God
Himself would be the author of error in man. “Lord, if we be in error, we
are being deceived by Thee” (Richardus de S. Victore, De Trin., lib. i., cap. 2) ……….
For this reason the Fathers of the
Vatican I Council laid down nothing new, but followed divine revelation and the
acknowledged and invariable teaching of the Church as to the very nature of
faith, when they decreed as follows: “All those things are to be believed by
divine and Catholic faith which are contained in the written or unwritten word
of God (remote rule of faith), and which are proposed by the Church as divinely
revealed, either by a solemn definition or in the exercise of its ordinary and
universal Magisterium (proximate rule of faith)” (Sess. iii., cap. 3). Hence, as it is clear that God
absolutely willed that there should be unity in His Church, and as it is
evident what kind of unity He willed, and by means of what principle He ordained
that this unity should be maintained, we may address the following words of
St. Augustine to all who have not deliberately closed their minds to the truth:
“When we see the great help of God, such manifest progress and such abundant
fruit, shall we hesitate to take refuge in the bosom of that Church, which, as
is evident to all, possesses the supreme authority of the Apostolic See through
the Episcopal succession? In vain do heretics rage round
it; they are condemned partly by the judgment of the people themselves,
partly by the weight of councils, partly by the splendid evidence of miracles.
To refuse to the Church the primacy is most impious and above measure
arrogant.” (De Unitate Credendi,
cap. xvii., n. 35).
Pope
Leo XIII, Satis Cognitum
The Magisterium is a truth of divine
revelation and is described by Pope Leo XIII as “living” and “permanent”
and “must be believed by everyone as true” because, if not true then “God
Himself would be the author of error in man.” It is God “the author”
who is “living” and “permanent” and therefore His Magisterium
communicates to the faithful the “living” and “permanent” (Fr.
Norbert Jones said), 'voice
of God' for the purpose of “unity in His Church” which is primarily
a unity of faith and for this end, God has established His Magisterium for the “unity to be maintained.”
It did not take long for the partisans
of error to move from a “living” God to a “living” changeable revelation.
“Tradition and the living Magisterium” in the 1908 Catholic Encyclopedia was
written by Rev. Jean Bainville who said:
“Hence it will be understood that the
living magisterium
searches in the past, now for authorities in favour of its present
thought in order to defend it against attacks or dangers of mutilation, now for
light to walk the right road without straying. The thought of the Church is
essentially a traditional thought and the living magisterium by taking
cognizance of ancient formulas of this thought thereby recruits its strength
and prepares to give to immutable truth a new expression which shall be in
harmony with the circumstances of the day and within reach of contemporary
minds. [.....] There is, therefore in the Church progress of dogma,
progress of theology, progress to a certain extent of faith itself, but this progress
does not consist in the addition of fresh information nor the change of ideas. What is believed has
always been believed, but in time it is more commonly and thoroughly understood
and explicitly expressed.”
The Catholic Encyclopedia, “Tradition and
the Living Magisterium,”
entry written by Fr. Jean Bainvel
This is the error of
Neo-modernism that postulates a radical division between the form of dogma
which is the divine truth and the matter of dogma which is the human words used
to express that truth. They hold that the dogma must perpetually undergo
purification from its human accretions to reach a more perfect expression of
truth.
“In theology some (i.e., Neo-Modernists)
want to reduce to a
minimum the meaning of dogmas; and to free dogma itself from terminology long
established in the Church and from philosophical concepts held by Catholic
teachers, to bring about a return in the explanation of Catholic
doctrine to the way of speaking used in Holy Scripture and by the Fathers of
the Church. They cherish
the hope that when dogma is stripped of the elements which they hold to be
extrinsic to divine revelation, it will compare advantageously with the
dogmatic opinions of those who are separated from the unity of the Church and
that in this way they will gradually arrive at a mutual assimilation of
Catholic dogma with the tenets of the dissidents.”
Pope
Pius XII, Humani Generis
A
little over 50 years after Bainville's encyclopedic
entry, Pope John XXIII said the same thing in his opening address at Vatican II
Council. The entire purpose of the Council was to “give immutable truth a new
expression which shall be in harmony with the circumstances of the day and
within reach of contemporary minds.”
It is therefore not surprising to find
that Fr. Bainville also is the author of the book,
“Is there salvation outside the Catholic Church” in which he said:
We
see that a soul may belong to the Church in desire, without suspecting at all
that there is such a thing as a Church… Is it not this desire that we
spontaneously recognise
in the case of our separated brethren, for example, in the case of Anglicans
and the orthodox Russians, when we see them adhering to Christ by faith and by
works of faith, yet all the while in invincible ignorance of the exclusive
rights of the Roman Church? They are faithful sheep, yet they wander,
unconsciously it is true, in the midst of a strange flock; but we regard them
as members of the true flock of Christ because at heart, despite their errors,
they are in the sheepfold of Christ. The same is the case, other things being equal, with those who live
outside all visible relation with Christ of any of the Christian sects.”
Fr. Jean Bainville,
Is There Salvation Outside the Catholic Church? (Chap. 6, pp. 57-58)
Every
dogma on what is necessary for salvation was reformulated into a meaningless
formula in the name of a “living magisterium.” We
arrive at salvation by implicit desire and no longer are divine faith, the
sacraments, or submission to the Roman pontiff necessary as necessities of
means for salvation.
If Pope Pius IX ever said, as de Mattei affirms, “I am tradition,” he should have repented
of it. The sources of revelation are Scripture and Tradition which constitute
the remote rule of faith. The pope cannot affirm an identity with divine
revelation or its source for the pope, the papacy and the Magisterium are all
without exception part of divine revelation. The source of divine revelation is
God and God alone.
The
end of the divine Magisterium is Dogma. Dogma is divine revelation defined by
the Magisterium which constitutes the formal object of divine and Catholic
faith. Dogma is the proximate rule of faith. It is an error to hold the pope
and the Church hierarchy as the proximate rule of faith. They are the means.
Dogma is the end. The means cannot be greater than the end. The pope is the
necessary material and instrumental cause of dogma but God, and God alone, is
the formal and final cause of dogma.
Once
the nature of dogma is understood and its authority as the proximate rule of
faith understood, the errors of conservative Catholicism, sedevacantism,
and “German synodalism” become manifest. Dealing with
a heretical pope is no more a problem than Jesus Christ dealing with the
heretic Caiaphas. The nature of immemorial ecclesiastical traditions, which are
the objects of dogmatic canons and included in the Tridentine
profession of faith, can no longer be regarded as merely disciplinary matters
open to the free and independent will of the legislator. It becomes easy to see
how and why our immemorial traditions are necessary attributes of the faith by
which alone it can be known and communicated to others. The Philistines of
Vatican II are then seen as heretical Neo-Iconoclasts destroying the images of
our faith. Vatican II is clearly seen as a work of the ordinary magisterium of churchmen based upon their grace of state
for the infallible Magisterium that God empowered His Church was formally
repudiated from the beginning of this Council to its end. Obedience is then
properly governed as a subsidiary virtue under the virtue of Justice and
directly regulated by the virtue of Religion. The claims of mere ecclesiastical
faith are dismissed. Regarding the schismatic Orthodox as sola traditio becomes a muddled and unnecessary construct.
Indefectibility which primarily is the power of the Church to offer acceptable
worship to God and sanctify the faithful is seen in its proper light and known
to have been never absent from the Church adhered to by Catholics faithful to
tradition. Sedevacantism becomes a hopeless concept
because it leads to a church that not only has no pope, no papacy, no
Magisterium but no material or instrumental causes to correct these permanent
deficiencies.
We
live in difficult times but our duty is clearly set before us. We must keep the
faith. The Catholics at Nicaea who professed their divine faith in the divine
Motherhood of the Blessed Virgin Mary against the heretic Nestorius did not
have the benefit of dogma. They became instrumental evidence of immemorial
tradition which ultimately led to the Magisterial dogmatic definition of this
revealed truth. We now have the benefit of their sacrifices. Future Catholics
will have the benefit of our sacrifices to defend Catholic truth when divine revelation
is dogmatized professing the faith with clarity and condemning modern errors.
We should direct our prayers to this end for as Dom Guéranger said:
“The definition of a revealed dogma is
one of the greatest benefits God can accord His Church. All of the truths which
Jesus Christ taught are life and light, and their explicit declaration in the
course of centuries each time brings to Christianity a new degree of strength
and splendor. The sentiment of faith must therefore cause the faithful to
desire development of the Creed, in order to enter more and more into
possession of the truth which the Son of God brought to earth. The happiness of
Heaven will consist in seeing the whole truth; the increasing richness of the Symbolum of revealed dogmas joins us ever closer to it here
below.”
Dom
Guéranger, The
Pontifical Monarchy
But
even now, we have sufficient dogmatic canons, if we understand them at the
proximate rule of our faith, to serve as “lamps which are always alight and
illuminating our steps which are directed towards God.”
David
Drew
Ss.
Peter & Paul Roman Catholic Mission
York,
PA
The crisis the Church is experiencing today is certainly
unprecedented in its characteristics, but it is neither the first nor the last
in history. Think, for example, of the attack suffered by the Papacy in the
years of the French Revolution.
In 1799 the city of Rome was invaded by General Bonaparte’s
Jacobin army. Pope Pius VI was taken prisoner to the city of Valence, where he
died on August 29, after long-suffering hastened his death. The town hall of
Valence notified the Directory of Pius VI’s death, adding that the last pope in
history had been buried.
Ten years later, in 1809, Pius VI’s successor, Pius VII, old
and infirm, was also arrested and, after two years of imprisonment in Savona,
was taken to Fontainebleau, where he remained until the fall of Napoleon. Never
had the Papacy appeared so weak before the world. But ten years later, in 1819,
Napoleon had disappeared from the scene and Pius VII was back on the papal
throne, recognized as the supreme moral authority by European rulers. In that
year 1819, Du Pape, the masterpiece of Count
Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821), was published in Lyon,
a work that had hundreds of reprints and anticipated the dogma of papal
infallibility, later defined by the First Vatican Council.
De
Maistre: Ultramontane Counter-Revolutionary
Joseph de Maistre is a great
defender of the Papacy, but it would be wrong for anyone to make him an
apologist for the despotic pope or dictator. Today there are some
traditionalists who blame ecclesiastical abuses of power on intransigent
Catholics of the nineteenth century. These ultramontanes
and counter-revolutionaries, we are told, attributed excessive power to the
pope, enthusing beyond measure about the dogma of infallibility. This
overreaction resulted in sympathy with those Gallican
Catholics who denied infallibility and the universal Primacy of the Pope, and
with those liberal or semi-liberal Catholics who, while not denying in
principle the dogma of infallibility, considered its definition inappropriate.
Among them was the Archbishop of Perugia Msgr. Gioacchino
Pecci, later Pope under the name Leo XIII, who, once
elected, was the first modern Pope to rule in a centralizing manner, imposing
as almost infallible the political and pastoral choice of ralliement
with the French Third Republic.
The dogma of infallibility proclaimed by Pius IX accurately
defines the limits of this extraordinary charism,
which no religion possesses, outside of the Catholic religion. The Pope in the
Church cannot do whatever he wants, because the source of his power is not his
will. The Pope’s task is to transmit and defend, through his Magisterium, the
Tradition of the Church. Alongside the Pope’s extraordinary Magisterium, which
has its source in ex cathedra definitions, there is an infallible
teaching that flows from the conformity of the ordinary Magisterium of all the
Popes to the Apostolic Tradition. Only by believing with the Church and its
unbroken Tradition can the Pope confirm his brethren in the faith. The Church
is not infallible because she exercises authority, but because she transmits a
doctrine.
“I
Am Tradition”
The words attributed to Blessed Pius IX, “I am Tradition,”
sometimes arouse scandal. However, these words must be understood in their
correct meaning. What the Pope means is not that his person is the source of
Tradition, but that there is no Tradition outside of him, just as there is no Sola
Scriptura independent of the Magisterium of the Church.
The Church is based on Tradition, but it cannot continue
without the Pope, whose authority cannot be transferred to either an ecumenical
council, a national episcopate or a permanent synod.
The
Priority of Hierarchy Over Dogma
There is a statement by Joseph de Maistre
in his “Lettre à une dame russe sur la nature et les effets du schisme,” which may be
as astonishing as that of Pius IX, but which is also profoundly true: “If it
were permitted to establish degrees of importance among things of divine
institution, I would place hierarchy before dogma, so indispensable is it to
the maintenance of the faith.”[1]
This sentence encapsulates the capital problem of the regula fidei in the
Church. Father John Perrone (1794-1876), founder of
the Roman theological school, develops this theme in the three volumes of his
work Il protestantesimo e la regola
di fede. The two
sources of Revelation are Tradition and Sacred Scripture. The former is
divinely assisted, the latter divinely inspired. “Scripture and Tradition
fertilize each other, illustrate each other, strengthen each other and complete
the ever one and identical deposit of divine revelation.”[2]
But in order to preserve this deposit of faith, which is
always one and the same until the end of the ages, Christ entrusted it to an
ever-living and speaking authority; the authority of the Church which consists
of the universal body of bishops united with the visible head of the Church,
the Roman Pontiff on whom Christ conferred fullness of power over the universal
Church.
Sacred Scripture and Tradition constitute the remote norms
of our faith, but the next regula fidei is represented by the teaching and judging
authority of the Church, which has its apex with the Pope. Hierarchy comes
in this sense before dogma. But even if we were to give dogma primacy over
hierarchy, we should remember that, of all dogmas, the one that in a certain
sense underpins all others is precisely the dogma of the infallible authority
of the Church. The Church enjoys the charism of
infallibility, although she exercises it in an extraordinary way only
intermittently. But the Church is always infallible, and has been so not since
1870, but since our Lord transmitted to his Vicar on earth St. Peter the power
to confirm his brethren in the faith.
The apostolic succession on which the Church’s authority is
based is a fundamental element of its divine constitution. The Council of
Trent, in defining the truth and rules of the Catholic faith, states that they
are contained “in the written books and unwritten traditions which, gathered by
the Apostles from the mouth of Christ himself or by the Apostles themselves,
under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, transmitted almost from hand to hand,
have come down to us” (Denz-H, no. 1501).
“True is only the Tradition that rests on the Apostolic
Tradition” reiterates contemporary Roman theologian Msgr. Brunero
Gherardini (1925-2017).[3]
This means that the Roman Pontiff, successor of Peter,
prince of the Apostles, is the guarantor par excellence of the Church’s
Tradition. But it also means that under no circumstances can the object of
faith exceed what is given to us by the testimonies of the Apostles.
Sola
Scriptura
and Sola Traditio
Protestants denied the authority of the church in the name
of “Sola Scriptura.” This error leads from Luther to Socinianism,
which is the religion of modern relativists. But the authority of the church
can also be denied in the name of “Sola Traditio,”
as the Orthodox do and as some traditionalists are in danger of doing. The
separation of Tradition from the authority of the Church leads in this case to
autocephaly, which is the condition of those without a visible and infallible
authority to relate to.
What the Protestant proponents of Sola Scriptura and
the Greek Orthodox proponents of Sola Traditio
have in common is the rejection of the infallibility of the Pope and his
universal Primacy; the rejection of the Roman Chair. This is why, according to
Joseph de Maistre, there is no radical difference
between the Eastern Schism and Western Protestantism.
It is a fundamental truth in all religious matters that
every church that is not Catholic is Protestant. In vain attempts have been
made to make a distinction between schismatic and heretical churches. I know
well what is meant, but in the end all difference lies only in words, and every
Christian who refuses the Holy Father’s communion is a Protestant or soon will
be. What is a Protestant? He is a man who protests; and what does it matter
whether he protests against one or more dogmas, against this or against that?
He may be more or less Protestant, but he always protests… Once the bond of
unity is broken, there is no longer a common tribunal, nor consequently an
invariable rule of faith. Everything is reduced to the particular
judgment and civil supremacy that constitute the essence of Protestantism.[4]
In the Catholic Church, the authenticity of Tradition is
guaranteed by the infallibility of the Magisterium. Without infallibility there
would be no guarantee that what the Church teaches is true. The understanding
of God’s word would be left to the critical inquiry of individuals and the
gates of relativism would be opened wide, as happened with Luther and his
followers. By denying the authority of the Pope, the Protestant Revolution
condemned itself to constant variation in a whirling doctrinal becoming. But in
the East, after the schism of 1054 the Orthodox Church, which in the name of sola
Traditio accepts only the first seven councils of
the Church, condemned itself to sterile immobility.
Those under the spell of Orthodoxy should be reminded of
Joseph de Maistre’s words, “All these Churches
separated from the Holy See at the beginning of the twelfth century can be
compared to frozen corpses whose forms have been preserved from the cold.”[5]
An Augustinian theologian of the Assumption Father Martin Jugie (1878-1954), developed this theme in a book published
in 1923 called Joseph de Maistre et l’Eglise greco-russe, which I recommend reading.
For many centuries, the East has been accustomed to regard
revealed doctrine as a treasure to be guarded, not as a treasure to be
exploited; as a set of immutable formulas, not as a living and infinitely rich
truth, which the spirit of the believer always seeks to understand and
assimilate better.[6]
The Church was not founded by Christ as an institution, already
rigidly and irrevocably constituted, but as a living organism, which – like the
body, the image of the Church – was to have a development. This
development of the Church, its growth in history, takes place through
contradiction and struggle, fighting especially against the great heresies that
attacked it internally. De Maistre again:
When we consider the trials that the Roman Church has
undergone through the attacks of heresy and the mixing of barbarous nations
that took place in her bosom, we stand in admiration seeing that, in the midst
of these terrible revolutions, all her titles are intact and go back to the
Apostles. If the Church has changed some things in her external forms, it is a
proof that She lives, for everything that lives in the universe changes,
according to circumstances, in everything that does not have to do with
essences. God, who reserved them for Himself, gave the forms to time to arrange
them according to certain rules. The variation of which I speak is even the
indispensable sign of life, because absolute immobility belongs only to death.[7]
The First Vatican Council, quoting Vincent of Lerins explains that the understanding of the truths of
faith must grow and progress with the succession of age and centuries in
intelligence, science and wisdom, but only “in the same dogma, meaning and
sentence” (Commonitorium, ch.
23, 3). Progress of faith does not in fact mean alteration of faith. Condemnation
of the alteration of faith, however, does not mean the rejection of all organic
development of dogma, which is accomplished through the Magisterium of the
Church, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, and is guaranteed by the charism of infallibility. But if the Church is infallible
there must be a subject who exercises this charism.
This subject is the Pope and it cannot be anyone other than him. In the faith
of the infallibility of the Pope lie the roots of the faith in the
infallibility of the whole Church.[8]
The Constitution Pastor Aeternus
of the First Vatican Council clearly states what the conditions of papal
infallibility are. The infallibility of the Pope in no way means that he
enjoys, in matters of government and magisterium,
unlimited and arbitrary power. While the dogma of infallibility defines a
supreme privilege, it sets its precise boundaries, admitting the possibility of
infidelity, error, and betrayal.
For the papolater, or “hyperpapalist,” the Pope is not the Vicar of Christ on
earth, whose job it is to transmit intact and pure the doctrine he has
received, but is a successor of Christ who perfects the doctrine of his
predecessors, adapting it to the changing times. Gospel doctrine is in
perpetual evolution because it coincides with the Magisterium of the reigning
Pontiff. The perennial Magisterium is replaced by the “living” Magisterium,
expressed by pastoral teaching, which is transformed every day and has its regula fidei in the
subject of the authority and not in the object of the truth transmitted.
Traditionalism
and the Papacy
One does not need theological science to understand that, in
the unfortunate case of contrast – true or apparent – between the “living
Magisterium” and Tradition, primacy can only be attributed to Tradition, for a
simple reason: Tradition, which is the “living” Magisterium considered in its
universality and continuity, is in itself infallible, while the so-called
“living” Magisterium, understood as the current preaching of the ecclesiastical
hierarchy, is so only under certain conditions.[9]
Indeed, in the Church, the ultimate “rule of faith” in times
of defection of faith is not the contemporary living Magisterium and its
non-defining acts, but in Tradition, which constitutes, with Sacred Scripture,
one of the two sources of the Word of God.
What happens when those who govern the Church cease to guard
and transmit Tradition, and, instead of confirming their brethren in the faith,
create confusion in their minds and cause bitterness and resentment in their
hearts?
When this happens it is time to increase love for the Church
and the Pope. But the answer to hyperpapalism is not
the neo-Gallicanism of certain traditionalists, nor
the Sola Traditio of the Greek-Russian schismatics. The man of Tradition is not an anarcho-traditionalist, but a Catholic who repeats with
Joseph de Maistre:
O holy Church of Rome, as long as the word is preserved for
me, I will use it to celebrate you. I salute you, immortal mother of science
and holiness! Hail, magna parens… In the midst of all
imaginable upheavals, God has constantly watched over you, O Eternal City! All
that could destroy you has rallied against you, and you have stood; and as you
were once the center of error, you have now for eighteen centuries been the
center of truth.[10]
Love for the Roman Pontiff, his prerogatives and rights, has
characterized authentically Catholic spirits throughout twenty centuries of
history, because, as Plinio Corrêa
de Oliveira states, “after love for God this is the highest love taught to us
by religion.”[11]
However, one should not confuse the Roman Primacy with the
person of the reigning Pope, just as one should not confuse the so-called
living Magisterium, with the perennial Magisterium, the private and
non-infallible teaching of the Pope with the Tradition of the Church. The
error, as Chilean scholar José Antonio Ureta has well pointed out lies not in ultramontanism, but
in neo-Gallicanism, which today comes in two
versions: that of the German synodalists and that of
some neo-traditionalists, especially from the Anglo-Saxon area.
The only hope in the future lies not in the diminishment of
the Papacy, but in the exercise of its supreme authority to solemnly and
infallibly condemn the theological, moral, liturgical and social errors of our
time. It is useless to discuss who will be the next pope. It is important to
discuss what the next pope should do and to pray that he will do it.
[1] Joseph de Maistre,”Lettre à une dame russe sur la nature et les effets du schisme et sur l’unité catholique,”
in Lettres et opuscules
inédits, A. Vaton,
Paris 1863, vol. II, pp. 267-268.
[2] Il protestantesimo e la regola di fede,
Civiltà Cattolica, Roma
1953, 3 voll., vol. I, p. 15.
[3] Quod et tradidi vobis, La Tradizione vita e giovinezza della chiesa (Casa Mariana, Frigento
2010), 405.
[4] Du Pape (H. Pélagaud, Lyon-Paris 1878), 401, 405.
[6] Martin Jugie, Joseph de Maistre et l’Eglise greco-russe, Maison de la bonne presse, Paris 1923, pp.
97-98.
[8] Michael Schmaus, Catholic Dogmatics, Marietti, Casale Monferrato 1963, vol.
III/1, p. 696.
[9] R. de Mattei, Apologia della Tradizione ,Lindau, Turin 2011, p. 146.
[11] R. de Mattei, The Crusader of
the 20th Century. Plinio Correa de Oliveira, Piemme, Casale Monferrato 1996, p. 309.
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