Cosmos-Liturgy-Sex

The recent “one, two” punch of the motu proprio, Summorum pontificum, and the CDF’s RESPONSES TO SOME QUESTIONS REGARDING CERTAIN ASPECTS OF THE DOCTRINE ON THE CHURCH (along with a very helpful commentary) illustrate the focus of B16’s pontifical program. Namely, to continue John Paul the Great’s (JPTG) program of implementing the authentic vision of the Second Vatican Council.

As I have said many times, an authentic reform of the liturgy is one of Benedict’s highest priorities. Hopefully one benefit of this will be that seminaries will now take more seriously their obligation to form their seminarians in Latin, which seems to be essentially proforma (if it is addressed at all) in too many seminaries at this point. While the wider availability will be slow in coming because of the preparations necessary to say the Mass well, I think that it will eventually help to create a longing for many of the important elements that were sadly left out of the current Roman Missal.

Furthermore, Summorum comes with a limpid affirmation that there is but one Latin Rite and that both the current Roman Missal and the 1962 Mass are two expressions of the same Rite. This is a clear statement of correction to the two “camps” of Catholics that agree that the Second Vatican Council was a break from the past. While these camps agree that VII was a break, that is all they agree about. The Bologna school camp has made it their primary task in life to convince the rest of the world that the Catholic Church, in the Second Vatican Council, has now recognized that She is just one of a host of other man-made organizations indistinguishable in essence from the non-demoninational church that will set up shop in the vacant store down at the mall next week. This School attempts to buttress its position with the claim that its “more humble view” is necessary for ecumenism, though this is not any ecumenism that is recognizable from even a cursory reading of Unitatis redintigratio (e.g. see paragraph 11 and the warning against harming the purity of the faith in the pursuit of a false peace). The other camp–the Radical Traditionalists–agree that the Second Vatican Council did break from the Catholic Church of the past and so they want to go back to the “good old days” of the 1950s–or perhaps the 1650s–in order to recover the purity of the faith.

Benedict recognizes that this erroneous theory of discontinuity needs to be corrected. One of the biggest issues is the faulty ecclesiology of the Bologna camp that attempts to place the entire weight of this “new” Catholic ecclesiology on the now infamous phrase in Lumen gentium 8, “the one Church of Christ … subsists in the Catholic Church… .” Well, this little phrase cannot bear such a burden, especially when all of the weight of evidence is against it. Theologians such as Francis J. Sullivan, (cf. e.g. “Quaestio Disputata: A Response to Karl Becker, S.J., On the Meaning of Subsistit In,” Theological Studies 67 (2006): 395-409) have spent a lot of time and effort trying to develop vast theories with detailed analyses of language, evolution of documents, etc., all with the aim of trying to show that the documents don’t really say what they say.

Setting motivation aside, it seems to me that these theologians possess a faulty philosophical foundation (apparently Ockhamist Nominalism) which allows them to conceive of a Church that can both have the fullness of Christ’s Church but not be equated with Christ’s Church at the same time. Christ has but one Mystical Body, one Church. It is the Catholic Church. This Mystical Body is hierarchically constituted with the Successor to St. Peter as its head. To rip the Catholic Church and place it on its own, in autonomy from the Church of Christ, renders the Church of Christ as an unrealized ideal that has no real ontology. This is an emaciated ecclesiology that also deprives humanity of it access to grace–understood as partaking in the divine nature (2 Pt 1:4). Thus we are left with a Reformed theology of grace as extrinsic favor rather than intrinsic, deifying communion. It is no coincidence that the Bologna school adopts a Protestant ecclesiology and is then driven also to a Protestant Sacramentology.

The argument is sometimes made that the Catholic Church is just another particular Church, with the assumption that every other Christian body is its own, autonomous particular church. But it is unity in Christ, and so in the Vicar of Christ, by which each particular Church achieves its essence. Contra Cardinal Kasper, the particular Church cannot preexist the Universal Church. Thus, to the degree the Christian body is united with the fullness of the Church, these Churches and ecclesial communities share in Christ’s mediation of the Father’s grace to humanity…i.e. are united to the Catholic Church. But regardless of whether they are in visible communion or not, any and all grace they receive is mediated through Christ’s single Mystical Body, and so it is mediated by the Catholic Church.

A major complaint is that this ecclesiology sounds so triumphalistic; thus it is arrogant. Proper distinctions need to be made to see the error in this. Any truth claim is what it is–it is either true or false. Arrogance/truimphalism is a subjective attitude and has nothing to do with truth claims. Truth can be presented in humility and falsehoods can be proclaimed with arrogance (the latter of which is more often the case I would argue). One cannot preemptively dismiss a truth claim as false simply because of fears about how it might be received. To do so is to succumb to an emotivist relativism.

It is this confused thinking that B16 is taking on as he attempts to get authentic ecumenical dialogue started (again) by returning Catholic ecumenists to their task of understanding and then humbly presenting the truth of the Catholic faith to their dialogue partners, and so get on with the important work of authentically moving toward unity.

We can see that B16 is going full bore in carrying out Blessed John XIII’s three main goals for VII: reinvigorating the faith of the Church, restoring Christian unity, and bringing the Church into dialogue with modernity. He has an uphill battle when too many of those who are involved in carrying out this program are so confused about what the Church really is and what She teaches. Nevertheless, building upon the patrimony of JPTG and with B-16’s intellectual acumen and intrepid leadership, we are now off to a great start.