Cosmos-Liturgy-Sex

Peter Steinfels, writing in the NY Times, asks the question about when any bishop in the US will speak out against B16’s lifting of the excommunication against the four SSPX bishops.  Steinfels, is a journalist, the former editor of Commonweal, a Fordham professor, etc, and was instrumental in helping get the Common Ground initiative started.  He would seem to be the kind of self-styled “progressive” that John Allen Jr has attempted to become–that is, thoroughly “progressive” in terms of viewing Catholicism through the lens of the “liberal” US intelligentsia, while trying to maintain an air of fairness to the views of those he considers the “conservative” opposition.

Steinfels begins his weekly column by setting up what he seems to think is justification for seeing some dissent from US Bishops to Benedict’s magnanimous action toward the Lefebvrists.  In other words, he shows that it is possible that B16 could have made an error of judgment and that the Bishops have a certain autonomy in their own right.  Since they are not prevented then, from expressing misgivings by the Church’s constitution, why are they not?

It doesn’t seem to have occurred to Steinfels, I suppose, that it might just be that they appreciate the significance of this gesture much more than he does.  In other words, they recognize that this is no mistake.  It is a mistake only to those who think that Regensburg was a mistake.  Church unity and the salvation of souls is of much more important than the trying to ride the fickle tides of MSM opinion which is always looking for a way to assault the Church.

Steinfels has two beefs.  First, he is concerned about the message that is being sent to the Jews given the response of some.  Second, he is concerned about, because of what SSPX stands for, what this is saying to the rest of the world about the significance of the  Second Vatican Council.  Steinfels writes:

Even Catholics who understand the priority that church leaders always give to healing any formal schism that can perpetuate itself are puzzling over the Vatican’s extraordinary solicitude for this relatively small ultratraditionalist sect.

They wonder whether proponents of liberation theology or women’s ordination need to enlist a few schismatic bishops, who might ordain further bishops, in order to get a similar hearing in Rome.

And of course there are Catholics who dread – and some who hope – that the accommodations made to the Society of St. Pius X augur a larger reversal of the work of Vatican II.

Surely Catholic bishops are aware of the corrosive effect that these kinds of nagging questions can have on the faith of their people. A few such questions have quite likely nagged at some bishops themselves. But so far none of them have chosen to discuss the matter out loud.

This silence would be understandable if the bishops’ only option were to engage in harsh criticism. But they have plenty of respectful, charitable alternatives, from merely acknowledging that the papal action was troubling or perplexing to indicating that they are requesting clarification of Rome’s procedures and the pope’s intentions.

It’s a safe bet that during the last week, private expressions of dismay or bewilderment have been flying from bishop to bishop and from bishops to Rome.

Steinfels here employs the disingenuous technique of the new journalism in which the journalist’s own biases are attributed to the anonymous masses in order to appear to objectively inject the biased tone the writer wants to engender.  It would be more honest if he were attribute the “puzzling,” “wondering” and “dreading” to himself.

I find it singularly remarkable that Steinfels is concerned about the “corrosive effect” that his perceived “reversal” of the work of VII might might have on the faith of Catholics.  He does not seem to be concerned about the “corrosive” effects of the dissent from Church teaching that the pages of the erstwhile Catholic magazine, Commonweal, had on the faith of Catholics while he was its editor.  After all, Catholics are adult and can make up their own minds.  Only when it comes to reversing the work of the Second Vatican Council does this become a threat to these “adult” Catholics.  This brings up the question as to what Steinfels understands to be the “work” of VII–a question I will take up shortly.

Steinfels seems to think that somehow SSPX is getting preferential treatment.  Perhaps he is saying more than he realizes when he says that proponents of liberation theology and women’s ordination need to enlist some schismatic bishops.  Since Steinfels recognizes that the lifting of the excommunication does not completely reconcile the SSPX, is he suggesting that perhaps the other groups he mentions have perhaps excommunicated themselves by their views? I doubt it.  Nevertheless, I am happy to see that he puts them in the same camp–that is, they all belong to a problematic group that needs to conform its views to the Church in some way or another.

Nevertheless, there are clearly differences.  SSPX has a validly (if illicitly) ordained hierarchy which governs approximately 600,000 souls.  They play a significant role in the faith life of many other Catholics who have similar concerns but who still maintain unity with the barque of Peter.  SSPX is especially important within France.

The possibility of dialogue with SSPX, as we have now seen, has been greatly enhanced with the lifting of the excommunications.  Steinfels certainly is sensitive to what he might call the chilling effects of excommunication on the possibilities of dialogue I would imagine. Why he does not seem to see that as applicable in this case is telling.

In fact, this group has now shown an extraordinary, I would say, turn around in their polemics against Rome since the excommunications were announced.  In fact, the apologies by Bishop Williamson and the efforts to silence him on the part of the other bishops can be directly attributed to the lifting of the excommunication.  For the run of the mill dissenters, it is left to their bishops and priests to help them to come to see the truth.  They have not been excommunicated as a group and so there are not the sames structure by which to bring them as a whole back into full communion with the Church.

Steinfels wishes to project his “nagging questions” upon the rest of Catholics in the US.  Perhaps he wishes, rather, to inflame them with the same.  Steinfels and his ilk are all about dialogue with those with whom one disagrees unless this dialogue might be viewed by his milieu as impolitic.  That would seem to be the case here.  If there is a chance to change the hearts and minds of Bishop Williamson and those he might influence, it will come about ultimately through restoring him to full communion with Church teaching.  Even if this conversion cannot happen, bringing  him under the authority of the Church is more likely to provide the opportunity to keep him from propagating his problematic views.  Indeed, just lifting the excommunication seems already to have born fruit in this regard.

I suspect that Steinfels’s problem is primarily that he shares the view of the SSPX, whether he would admit it or not.  That is, that Vatican II marked a rupture with the pre-conciliar Church and if there is a chance at all of bringing SSPX back in, this would upset his premise.  If it is possible to reconcile SSPX, then the Bologna school’s interpretation is all the more clearly reprobate than he might like to believe.  The hope of the Common Ground initiative to raise dissent to respectability and thereby firmly entrenching it in the US Church as a legitimate perspective, will have been further dashed.

Bishops, by and large, realize that the “progressive” agenda is dead.  The only question is what will be the size of the Church that remains after the laity comes to realize that the Church has not and will not change Her teachings.  Who will be the first to ask the question? It will surely not be by any Bishop who has thought about this issue in any theological depth and with any level of objectivity.