Pax Orbis

by Marc J de Castella.

Although first published in 2011, this article remains highly relevant for today’s traditional Catholics.

With great interest, I recently read The Council in Question, a dialogue between Aiden Nichols OP and British journalist, Moyra Doorly. Using Archbishop Lefebvre’s famous An Open Letter to Confused Catholics (Fowler Wright Books Ltd, 1986) as the template for her arguments, Doorly presents a lucid, incisive and compelling case for criticising various problematic aspects of Council documents and the vernacular liturgy. Aiden Nichols responds with the predictable ambivalent, evasive, neo-conservative and often unsubstantiated apologia for the Hermeneutic of Continuity Thesis. He argues both the controversial documents and the Novus Ordo liturgy are essentially in conformity with Catholic tradition because they are legitimate developments of that tradition.

Unable to resist the neo-modernist pejorative label “Lefebvreism” in order to dismiss, by implication, traditionalist arguments as the misguided doctrines of a sect leader, Nichols presents a number of assertions, so patronising and patently erroneous, they cannot remain uncontested. Unfortunately, this brief commentary does not permit an adequate response to all of these. I will therefore explore only two major issues, namely, the concept of “Tradition” and secondly, the highly controversial issue of “Religious Liberty”.

Firstly, Nichols, as I will shortly demonstrate, espouses a concept of tradition which is completely at odds with the authentic understanding of Catholic Tradition (p.42):

“The difference between ‘Tradition’ with a capital ‘T’ and tradition with a lower case ‘t’ is that the first refers to Revelation as transmitted in the Church’s life, while the second refers to the ‘ways’ in which the Church presents it. The way in which the Church presents Tradition may vary in its conceptual idiom, or its liturgical expression, or its artistic style. It can vary in the literary forms it favours, or in the spiritualities it uses, or, in the charisms it deploys. Tradition can be expressed in rigorous ways, as in the ‘tradition’ of Scholastic theology, or in ways that are even more relaxed in their attitudes to strict canons of evidence and proof, as in the hagiographical ‘tradition’ that Saint Peter Martyr died writing the creed in his own blood. (The lives of the Saints are monuments of Tradition). It is part of the richness of Catholicism, of the ‘Catholic tradition’, that it luxuriates in such variety. Not for nothing are we a Church made up of numerous ritual Churches, Eastern and Western, with which (I hope) a Church of Anglican Catholic tradition will one day be numbered. To limit the Catholic Church to those ways of presenting Tradition typical of a Scholastically orientated Catholicism in the middle decades of the twentieth century cannot be right. This was Archbishop’s mistake.” ¹

In stark contrast, the Council of Trent, one of the most important infallible dogmatic Councils in the Church’s history, defines Tradition as the truths of faith and morals received by the Apostles from the very mouth of Christ or from the Holy Ghost, which have been transmitted from them to us without alteration, as though from hand to hand.² And who are the witnesses of Tradition, whose voices succeed each other down the centuries, faithfully transmitting what they have received without reinterpreting, reformulating or altering the content of truth to accommodate their contemporary circumstances? Of course, they are the holy Fathers, the liturgy itself, the dispersed and unanimous magisterium of the bishops and the magisterium of popes and councils.

Throughout the historical process of transmitting the deposit of faith, Tradition, in essence, is immutable. By means of this immutability, Tradition provides a reliable rule for the faith and hence, a permanent safeguard for interpreting scripture. There cannot be a hermeneutic of scripture different from yesterday’s which can allow scripture to undergo a change in “the ‘ways’ in which the Church presents it” and hence, a change in its “conceptual idiom, liturgical expression, artistic style, literary form or form of spirituality”, as Nichols would have us believe. Immutable in itself, Tradition progresses in becoming more explicit.³

Hence, the Church’s magisterium has always sought to make dogma more precise and explicit, without subverting its content, without reformulating and adapting it to the believing subject, to man, as Nichols proposes. Nichols therefore promotes a subverted magisterium, in essence, an anti-magisterium, for instead of adapting man to God, he wishes to adapt God to man.

It was Saint Vincent of Lerins, one of the great Doctors of the Church, who first explicated the homogenous development of dogma in the year 434, the notion that dogmas always increase in explicitness, but never by mutation :
“It is a characteristic of progress that each thing be amplified in itself; it is characteristic of change, on the other hand, that something be transformed into something else…whenever some of the essential seed grows in the course of time, then one rejoices in it and cultivates it with care, but one never changes the nature of the germ: then is added to it, certainly, its appearances, its form, its clarity, but the nature of each genus remains identical.”⁴

Citing the same holy Doctor in his 1854 Bull defining the Immaculate Conception, and speaking of the “dogmas deposited with the Church,” Pius IX declared that the Church “devotes herself to polishing them in such a manner that these dogmas of heavenly doctrine receive proof, light and clarity, but retain fullness, integrity, propriety, and that they increase only in their genus, that is to say, in the same dogma, the same meaning and the same proposition,”(DS 28O2)

This progress in clarity is similar to the process of cutting and polishing a high quality diamond. The person who initially finds the gem receives its intrinsic value, the process of refinement only reveals what is already present. Likewise, the quest of theology and the magisterium is that of finding a more precise expression of the divine mystery as it is, for the mystery itself is immutable, as God is immutable, and can never fall out of date. The evolution of the formulation of faith, of dogma, therefore comprises the search for greater precision, greater refinement, without deviating from scriptural depth. It should never propose a new and adapted formulation to suit the successive, temporary forms of human subjectivity down the ages.

Nicaea’s “consubstantial” and Trent’s “transubstantial” are illustrative of successful reductions to a perfect objectivity, to the full expression of immutable Christocentric mysteries.⁵ Both dogmas have been defined by these dogmatic Councils and infallibily declared to be intrinsic to the deposit of faith, and hence, they are immutable core doctrines. These dogmas can never be proposed in a new and adapted formulation to accommodate the believer. On the contrary, the subject must accept the objective content of dogma, irrespective of how “pre-conciliar” it may seem to his/her neo-Modernist sensibilities !

Nichols’ contention that Dignitatis Humanae, the Council’s 1965 Declaration on Religious Liberty, is a homogeneous doctrinal development, is also patently erroneous. In essence, he claims it does not proclaim new doctrine, is not a heterogeneous mutation of traditional Catholic teaching and therefore, does not constitute a rupture with tradition.⁶ Traditional teaching, as Doorly rightly points out, is present in Dignitatis Humanae as it affirms “traditional Catholic teaching on the moral duty of individuals and societies towards the true religion and the one Church of Christ.”(para 1) But as Doorly asks,⁷ how can individuals and societies exercise this moral duty if they are also asked, by the new teaching contained in the same document, to abandon it ?

With characteristic incisiveness, Doorly presents the rupture with traditional teaching: “Going way beyond the pre-conciliar principle of religious tolerance, which in a Catholic State the Church has deemed necessary for the preservation of peace, Dignitatis Humanae, declares,”the right to religious freedom is based on the very dignity of the human person (and)…must be given such recognition in the constitutional order of society as will make it a civil right.”(para 2) Doorly then continues her critique: “… Dignitatis Humanae grants equal rights to all belief systems by asserting the obligation of the State to ensure that all religious communities are free to ‘honour the Supreme Godhead with public worship, help their members to practice their religion…(and)…not be prevented from freely demonstrating the special value of their teaching.'(para 4). Religious liberty therefore applies to all religions as the dignity of man requires and the Church now only claims her share of it. But how can a State obliged to recognise religious liberty for all religions also exercise its ‘moral duty towards the true religion and the one Church of Christ ?’ Surely, by granting equal rights to belief systems which cannot be true, since only Catholicism is true according to tradition, as Dignitatis Humanae affirms, religious liberty grants rights to error and promotes the religious indifferentism of the State”.⁸

The validity of Doorly’s analysis is demonstrated by the fact that the popes of the nineteenth century have condemned religious liberty not only because it promotes indifferentism, but primarily because it is intrinsically erroneous. Pius IX declared it is not “a right proper to each man”⁹ whilst Leo XIII said it is not “a right which nature has given to man.”¹⁰

The motives of both Popes in condemning religious liberty were predicated upon several universal moral norms. The Catholic religion is the one true faith because she was instituted by God Himself, in the person of the incarnate Word, Christ. The State has the duty to recognise this and hence, a corresponding duty to protect its citizens against the influence of socially professed error. In fulfilling its duty to promote the eternal salvation of its citizens in this manner, however, “no one shall be forced to embrace the Catholic faith against his will,” for as Saint Augustine wisely reminds us, “Man cannot believe otherwise than of his own will.”¹¹

Now the immutable truth which lies at the core of the academic debate is that religious liberty, defined as a natural right of the person, remains a condemned error. The doctrine of the faith is immutable even if its complete application is impeded by contemporary political and cultural exigencies wherein, for example, religious plurality demands, in the interests of political prudence, tolerance or even legal equality between diverse cults. Nevertheless, such contemporary circumstances do not affect the content of the doctrine, and hence, religious liberty should not be invoked in the name of justice today. But if/when society regains a Christian ethos, civil measures must be undertaken to repress false cults, as were formally implemented by Catholic States pursuant to Pius IX’S Syllabus.^{12 13}

In essence, religious liberty is an intrinsic evil; it remains permanently condemned and can never be justifiably invoked to suit the spirit of the age. I am here indebted to Bishop Tissier de Mallerias for these insightful words :
“…that religious liberty had in 1965 a personalist context, very different from the context of aggressiveness that it had a hundred years earlier in 1854, at the time of the syllabus, does not change its intrinsic malice. The circumstances of 1864 certainly caused Pius IX to act, but they did not affect the content of the condemnation that he set down for religious liberty. Should a new Luther arise in 2O17, even without his attaching, as in 1517, his 95 theses to the door of the collegial Church of Wittenberg, he would be condemned on the very terms of 5OO years before.”¹⁴

In concluding, then, I wish to emphasize the importance of The Council in Question in accurately portraying the debate between Traditionalism and neo-conservatism concerning Vatican II and the Novus Ordo liturgy. Undoubtedly, the book’s principal strengths lie in its powerful case for the hermeneutic of rupture and discontinuity between many Conciliar documents and tradition. In juxtaposing Doorly’s powerful and compelling arguments for criticising certain problematic Conciliar documents with Nichols’ neo-conservative analysis, the merits of their respective stances can be accurately assessed. In largely failing to challenge Doorly and engage with the evidence she presents to underpin her arguments, Nichols left me thoroughly convinced that the neo-conservative case for a hermeneutic of continuity with Tradition is devoid of merit and therefore, completely without basis.

(Reprinted with kind permission from The Remnant, Dec 7,2O11).

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ENDNOTES

1. The Council in Question: Moyra Doorly and Aiden Nichols OP, Freedom Publishing Australia with Gracewing, UK, 2O11 ↩︎
2. The Council of Trent, session IV,DZ 782 ↩︎
3. Faith Imperilled by Reason: Benedict XVI’S Hermeneutics. Bishop Bernard Tissier de Mallerais, Thursday, March 4, 2O1O, p.8 ↩︎
4. Saint Vincent of Lerins, Commonitorium RJ 2173-2174 ↩︎
5. Bishop B. Tissier de Mallerais, Op. Cit pp. 7-8. ↩︎
6. The Council in Question, Op. Cit. p. 84 ↩︎
7. Ibid p.77 ↩︎
8. Ibid p. 78 ↩︎
9. Quanta Cura, DZ 169O ↩︎
10. Libertas, DZ 1 ↩︎
11. Immortale Dei (para. 36) ↩︎
12. Bishop B. Tissier de Mallerais, pp. 1O-11 ↩︎
13. The Syllabus of Errors was an appendix to Pius IX’S famous Encyclical, Quanta Cura, both of which were promulgated on December 8, 1864. Referencing earlier papal documents, the Syllabus utilized such Church doctrine to condemn a list of eighty propositions which the Holy See deemed to be heterodox. The Syllabus deplores the primary errors of liberalism which subvert Catholic teaching, particularly in the realm of social and political doctrine. Additional examples of such proscribed errors include pantheism, naturalism and absolute rationalism; moderate rationalism, indifferentism; errors concerning the Church and her rights; errors regarding civil society, considered both in itself and in relation to the Church; errors concerning natural and Christian ethics; errors concerning Christian marriage; errors having reference to modern liberalism. ↩︎
14. Bishop B. Tissier de Mallerais, Op. Cit. ↩︎