Roberto de Mattei
Speech, Roman Life Forum 2016
May 6, 2016
In the Gospel, Jesus uses many metaphors to indicate
the Church He founded. One of the most fitting is the image of the boat threatened
by a tempest (Matt. 8, 23-27; Mark, 4, 35-41; Luke 8, 22-25). This image has often been used by the Fathers of
the Church and the Saints when depicting the Church as a barque at sea, shaken
and tossed by the waves and, which lives, we could say, amid tempests, without ever being submerged by the
waves.
Well-known in the Gospel, is the scene of the
tempest on Lake Tiberias, calmed by Our Lord: “Tunc surgens imperavit ventis et mari” (Matt. 8, 26). When the Papacy was in Avignon, Giotto depicted the
scene of Peter’s tempest-tossed boat in a famous mosaic originally found in the
gable of Old St. Peter’s Basilica and
which is now in the atrium of the new Basilica.
During Lent of 1380, Saint Catherine of Siena made a
vow to go to St. Peter’s every morning to pray in front of this image. One day,
the 29th of January 1380, around the time of vespers, while
Catherine was absorbed in prayer, Jesus, came out of the mosaic and placed the
‘Navicella’ of the Church on her shoulders. The Saint, overwhelmed by so much
weight, fell unconscious to the ground. This was the last visit made to St.
Peter’s by Catherine, who had always
exhorted the Pope to guide the ‘Navicella’ of the Church fearlessly.
Throughout two
thousand years of history, the mystical Ship of the Church has always braved
storms and tempests.
During the first
three centuries, the Church was relentlessly persecuted by the Roman Empire.
Over that period, between Saint Peter and Pope Melchiades, a contemporary of
the Emperor Constantine, there were thirty-three Popes. All of them are saints
and except for two who underwent exile, the other thirty all died martyrs.
In the year 313,
Constantine the Great granted freedom to the Church and Christians, who, once
out of the catacombs, began to lay the foundations of a new Christian society.
But the Fourth century, the century of the Church’s triumph and freedom, was
also the century of the terrible Arian crisis.
In the Fifth century, the Roman Empire collapsed and the Church, by
Herself, had to face invasions, first by the barbarians and then by Islam,
which from the VIIIth century, inundated Christian lands such as Africa and
Asia Minor, which since then have never been restored to the true faith.
In the centuries from Constantine to Charlemagne there were sixty-two
Popes. Among them were, Saint Leo the Great, who braved, alone, Attila, “the
Scourge of God”, Saint Gregory the Great, who strenuously fought against the
Lombards, Saint Martin I, sent into exile in chains to Chersoneus and Saint
Gregory III who lived in continuous peril of death, under persecution by the
Byzantine Emperors. Yet, along with
these great defenders of the Church, we also find Popes like Liberius, Vigilius
and Honorius who vacillated in the faith. Honorius, in particular, was
condemned as a heretic by his successor, Saint Leo II.
Charlemagne restored the Christian Empire and founded the Christian
civilization of the Middle Ages. Even so, this era of faith was not devoid of
evils, such as simony, the moral laxity of the clergy and rebellions against
the authority of Peter’s Chair by the Christian Emperors and Sovereigns. After
Charlemagne’s death, between 882 and 1046, there were forty-five Popes and
anti-popes, of which fifteen were deposed and fourteen imprisoned, exiled and
murdered. The Medieval Popes experienced fights and persecutions, from St.
Paschal I to Saint Leo IX until Saint Gregory VII the last Medieval Pope to be
canonized and who died, persecuted, in exile.
The Middle-Ages
reached their peak under the pontificate of Innocence III (The Third), but
Saint Lutgardis had a vision wherein the Pope appeared to her completely
covered in flames, telling her that he would have to stay in Purgatory until
the Last Judgment, on account of three grave faults he had committed. Saint
Robert Bellarmine comments: “If a Pope so
worthy and esteemed by all suffers this fate, what will happen to the other
ecclesiastics, religious or laity who stain themselves with infidelity?”
In the
Fourteenth century, at the transfer of the Papacy to Avignon for seventy years,
there followed a crisis just as terrible as the Arian one: the Great Schism of
the West, which saw Christendom divided between two, and then three Popes, with
the problem of canonical legitimacy not being resolved until 1417.
There followed
an age of seeming tranquility, the period of humanism, which in reality was
preparation for a new catastrophe: the Protestant Reformation of the Sixteenth
century. Once more, the Church reacted vigorously but in the Seventeenth and
Eighteenth centuries, the first heresy that chose not to be separated from the
Church, crept into Her heart, and stayed there, in the inside: Jansenism.
The French Revolution and Napoleon tried to destroy the Papacy, but were
unable to. Two Popes, Pius VI and Pius VII were exiled from Rome and
imprisoned. In 1799 when Pius VI died in Valence, the city council communicated
the news of his death in writing to the Directory, stating, that the last Pope
in history had been buried.
From Boniface VIII, the last Medieval Pope, to Pius XII, the last of the
pre-conciliar era, there were 68 Popes, of which only two have been canonized
by the Church to date: Saint Pius V and Saint Pius X; two beatified: Innocence XI and Pius IX. All
found themselves in the middle of furious tempests. Saint Pius V fought against
Protestantism and animated the Holy League against Islam, obtaining victory at
Lepanto; Blessed Innocence XI fought Gallicanism and was the artificer behind
the liberation of Vienna from the Turks in 1683. The great Pius IX courageously
resisted the Italian Revolution, which in 1870, wrenched the Holy City from
him. Saint Pius X fought a new heresy - modernism - the synthesis of all
heresies - which deeply infiltrated the Church between the Nineteenth and the
Twentieth century.
Vatican II,
opened by John XXIII and concluded by Paul VI, proposed the inauguration of a
new era of peace and progress for the Church, but the Post-Council turned out
to be one of the most dramatic periods in the life of the Church. Benedict XVI,
using a metaphor by Saint Basil[1]., likened the Post-Council to a naval battle, at night, in a tempest at
sea. This is the age in which we are living.
The lightening
that struck St. Peter’s on February 11 th 2013, the day Benedict XVI
announced his abdication, is like the symbol of this tempest which now seems to
have engulfed the Barque of Peter and is engulfing the life of every son and
daughter in the Church.
The history of tempests in the Church is the history of the persecutions
She has suffered, but it’s also the history of schisms and heresies, which,
from their inception have undermined Her internal unity. The internal attacks
have always been more dangerous and graver than the external attacks. The
gravest of these attacks, the two most terrible tempests, were the Arian heresy
of the Fourth century and the Great Schism of the West in the Fourteenth
century.
In the first case, the
Catholic populace didn’t know where the true faith was as the bishops were
divided, among Arians, semi-Arians, anti-Arians plus the Popes didn’t express
themselves clearly. It was then that St. Jerome coined the expression according
to which: “the whole world woke and
groaned in astonishment to find itself Arian” [2].
In the second case, the Catholic populace didn’t know who the true Pope
was, as cardinals, bishops, theologians, sovereigns and even saints, followed
different Popes. Nobody denied the Pontifical Primacy and so it was not about
heresy, but everyone followed two or even three Popes and thus found themselves
in that situation of ecclesial division which theology defines as schism.
Modernism was a potentially greater crisis than the previous two, but it
didn’t explode in all its virulence for the reason that it had been partially
crushed by Saint Pius X. It disappeared
for some decades, but re-emerged with force during the Second Vatican Council.
This Council, the last one in the Church that took place between 1962 and 1965,
chose to be a pastoral Council, but because of the ambiguous and equivocal
nature of its texts, brought about catastrophic pastoral results.
The current crisis comes directly
from the Second Vatican Council and has its origin in the primacy of praxis
over dogma affirmed by the Second Vatican Council.
John XXIII in his opening speech at
the Council, on October 11 th 1962 presented the pastoral nature of
Vatican II, distinguishing between “the
deposit, or the truths of the faith” and “the way they are set forth, with their meaning preserved intact […].”
All of the previous twenty councils had been pastoral, as they had had a
dogmatic and normative form alongside the pastoral dimension. At Vatican II,
the pastoral was not only the natural explication of the dogmatic content of
the Council in ways adapted to the times; on the contrary, the “pastoral” was
elevated as an alternative principle to dogma. The outcome was a revolution in
language and mentality and the transformation of the pastoral into a new
doctrine.
Among the most
faithful followers of the “spirit of the Council” is the German Cardinal,
Walter Kasper. It was precisely to him that Pope Francis entrusted the
introductory report on the pre-synod debate at the February 2014 Consistory.
The basis of this report is the idea that it’s not the doctrine on the indissolubility of
marriage that has to be changed, but the pastoral approach to the divorced and
remarried. The same formula was used by
Cardinal Kasper in commenting on Pope
Francis’ Post-Synod Exhortation, Amoris
Laetitia. Cardinal Kasper explained
that “the Pope’s apostolic exhortation
‘doesn’t change anything of church doctrine or of canon law, but it changes
everything’”[3].
The compass of
Pope Francis’ pontificate and the key to the reading of his latest Post-Synod,
Apostolic Exhortation is on the principle of necessary change - not in doctrine
- but in the very life of the Church.
Yet, to sustain the irrelevance of doctrine, the Pope produced a 250page
document, where he presents a theory on the primacy of the pastoral. On April
16th, during his return from Lesbos, the Pope suggested journalists
read Cardinal Schönborn’s presentation
of Amoris Laetitia, assigning to him the authentic interpretation
of the Exhortation. At the press conference on April 8th, when he
presented the document, Cardinal Schönborn defined the
pontifical Exhortation, first of all, as “a
linguistic event.”
This formula is not new: it has
already been used by one of Pope Francis’ confreres, the Jesuit, John O’Malley
from Georgetown University. In his history of Vatican II, O’Malley defined the Second Vatican Council
as a “linguistic event”[4], a
new way to express [things] and which, according to the Jesuit historian, “marked a definitive break with previous
Councils”[5] To say [it was] a linguistic
event, O’Malley explains, doesn’t mean to minimize the revolutionary magnitude
of Vatican II, since language has a teaching in itself. The leaders of the Council “[…]understood very well that Vatican II,
having proclaimed itself a pastoral council, [that]it was precisely for this it
was also a teaching Council (…). The discursive style of the Council was the
means, but the means communicated the message” [6]
The choice of a language “style” to
communicate with the contemporary world, reveals a way of being and thinking,
and in this sense it has to be admitted that the literary genre and the
pastoral style of Vatican II, not only express the organic unity of the event,
but are the implicit vehicle of a coherent doctrine. “The style – O’Malley recalls – is
the ultimate expression of the meaning, it is the meaning only – not ornamental
– but it is also the hermeneutic instrument par excellence”[7].
This Revolution
in language doesn’t only consist in the change of meaning in words, but also in
the omission of some terms and concepts. Many examples can be made: affirming
that hell is empty is most certainly a reckless proposition, if not
heretical. To omit, or limit at maximum,
any reference to hell doesn’t formulate any erroneous proposition, but
constitutes an omission that makes way for the even greater error of an empty
hell: the idea that hell doesn’t exist,
as nobody talks about it; and so that
which is ignored, it is as if it didn’t exist.
Pope Francis has never
denied the existence of hell, but in three years, he has mentioned it only a
couple of times, in a very inappropriate manner, and, by stating in Amoris laetitia that “the way
of the Church is not to condemn anyone forever ” (no. 296) he seems to be
denying the eternal damnation of sinners.
Doesn’t this ambiguity have the same practical value as a theoretical
denial?
Nothing changes in doctrine but everything is changed
in praxis. But if you don’t want to deny the principle of causality, upon which
the entire edifice of Western knowledge is founded, it’s necessary to admit
that every effect has a cause and that from every cause there are consequences.
The relationship between cause and effect is the one between theory and action,
between doctrine and practice. Among those who have understood this very well
is the Dominican Bishop of Oran, Mgr Jean-Paul Vesco. In an interview to La Vie, he said that with Amoris
Laetitia “rien ne change de la doctrine de l’Église et pourtant tout change dans la
rapport de l’Église au monde”[8].
Today - emphasizes the Bishop of Oran -
no confessor will be able to refuse absolution to those who are convinced in
conscience that the irregular situation they are in is the only one - or at
least, the best one possible. The circumstances and the situation, according to
the new morality, dissolve the concept of intrinsic evil and public and
permanent sin.
If priests cease mentioning public sin and encourage adulterers and
cohabitators to integrate into the Christian community, without excluding their
access to the Sacraments, [then] along
with pastoral praxis, also doctrine is
necessarily changed. The rule of the Church was “the divorced, remarried civilly, who live together, cannot receive the
Eucharist.” Amoris laetitia in contrast, establishes:“the divorced and remarried, in some cases, can receive Holy
Communion."
The change is not only de facto,
it is in principle. One single exception is sufficient in practice to change
the principle. How can it be denied that this Revolution in praxis is not also
a Revolution in doctrine? But even if nothing is changed in doctrine, we know
what will change in practice: the number of sacrilegious Communions will
increase; the number of invalid confessions will increase; the number of grave
sins committed against the Sixth and the Ninth commandments will increase; the
number of souls that will go to hell will increase; and all this will happen
not against, but due to Amoris laetitia.
At Fatima, Our Lady showed the three little shepherds the terrifying
vision of hell where the souls of poor sinners go, and to Jacinta it was
revealed that the sin which leads most souls to hell is the one against purity.
Who could have imagined that to the already great number of impure sins there
would be added the diffusion of “common-law marriage” often ratified civilly?
And who would have thought that this condition would be backed by a pontifical
exhortation? Yet this is what has happened. One cannot pretend not to see it…
The Church has a practical mission: the salvation of souls. How are
souls saved? By persuading them to live in conformity with the law of the
Gospel.
Also the Demon has a practical objective: the loss of souls. How are
souls lost? By persuading them to live in deformity to the law of the Gospel.
After the Resurrection, when Jesus appeared to His disciples on the
mounts of Galilee He gave them the mission of baptizing in the name of the Most
Holy Trinity, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and to teach and observe His
law, without infringing any precept: “docentes eos, servare omnia” (Mt. 18, 19-20). “He that believeth and is baptized – shall be saved - He adds – but he that believeth not shall be
condemned” (Mark, 16,16).
The task of Priests is to teach and
observe the law, not to cease applying it, not to find exceptions that infringe
it. He who believes, but contradicts in works the faith in which he believes,
will be condemned, like those, according to Saint Paul, who “profess that they know God; but in their
works they deny Him; being abominable
and incredulous, and to every good work reprobate” (Ad Titum, I, 16).
To express a
negative judgment on the Apostolic Exhortation Amoris laetitia, it is not necessary to have studied theology, the sensus fidei which results from Baptism
and Confirmation is quite sufficient. The sensus
fidei brings us, through supernatural instinct, to refuse this document,
leaving the task of applying adequate theological notes to the
theologians.
Between heresy
and orthodoxy there are many possible gradations. Heresy is the open, formal, persistent
opposition to a truth of faith. However,
there are doctrinal propositions, while not being explicitly heretical, are
censored by the Church with theological qualifications proportionate to their gravity
and contrast with Catholic doctrine[9]. Opposition to the truth in fact, presents
different grades, depending on whether it’s direct or indirect, immediate or
remote, open or hidden, and so on. The “theological censures” convey the
negative judgment of the Church on an expression, an opinion or an entire
theological doctrine. They regard the doctrinal content: heretical propositions, near
to heresy, savoring of heresy, erroneous in the faith, temerarious; they
regard the form, for which the propositions are judged equivocal, ambiguous, captious, suspect, bad-sounding etc. ; they
regard the effects they can produce for the particular circumstances of time
and place. In such a case, the propositions are censured as perverse, corrupt, scandalous, dangerous,
seductive to the simple. In all these cases, Catholic truth lacks doctrinal
integrity or it’s expressed in a deficient and improper manner.
In one of his
reflections on April 16th 2016, Father Jean-Michel Gleize, refers to number 299 of Amoris laetitia,
according to which; “the baptized
who are divorced and civilly remarried need to be more fully integrated into
Christian communities in the variety of ways possible, while avoiding any
occasion of scandal’” (§ 299) and
comments: “In the variety of ways
possible:” why not, then, in
admitting them to Eucharistic Communion? If it is no longer possible to say
that the divorced and remarried are living in a state of mortal sin (301), why
should the fact of giving them Communion be an occasion for scandal? And at
that point, why refuse them Holy Communion? The Exhortation Amoris Laetitia is clearly moving in this direction. In so
doing, it represents an occasion of spiritual ruin for the entire Church; or in
other words, what theologians call a “scandal” in the full sense of the term.
And this scandal is the consequence of a practical relativization of the truth
of the Catholic Faith concerning the necessity and indissolubility of the
sacramental union of marriage.”[10]
Amoris laetitia is a scandalous document,
with catastrophic effects for souls.
We do not lack
respect for the Pope and even less so do we place the Papal Primacy in doubt.
We need to be deeply grateful to Blessed Pius the Ninth for having defined at
the First Vatican Council, two dogmas which allow us to face clearly the
present crisis: the dogma of the Roman Primacy and the dogma on papal
infallibility.
The Pope’s Primacy of government, along with the
infallibility of his Magisterium, constitute the foundation on which Jesus
Christ instituted His Church and on which She will stand firm until the end of
time. This Primacy was conferred to Peter, Prince of the Apostles, after the
Resurrection (John, 21, 15-17) and
was acknowledged by the primitive Church, not as a personal and transitory
privilege, but as a permanent and essential element of the Church’s Divine
Constitution.
There is no authority on earth higher than the Pope’s, for the reason
that there is no higher office and no higher mission on earth. What mission?
That of confirming the brethren in the faith, of opening heaven to souls, of
pasturing the flock of lambs and sheep that belong to Christ, the one, supreme,
Good Shepherd: in short – the governing of the Church.
The Pope is the one who rules the Church. This mission comes to him from
the fact that he is the successor of St. Peter to whom Jesus entrusted the
mission as visible Head of the Church. A mission that transcends his person
since it would be continued by his successors.
The Pope is not the successor of Christ, he is the successor of Peter
and not in an immediate way, but through the apostolic succession, which, in
the space of twenty centuries, ties him to Peter, Prince of the Apostles and
the first Vicar of Christ.
The Vicar of Christ is the Bishop of Rome because Rome is not a city or
diocese like any other: it has a universal vocation. Peter’s successors are
Bishops of Rome, since, by God’s disposition, Saint Peter came to Rome and by
dying in this spot, he opened, for the bishops of Rome, the legitimate and
uninterrupted succession of his universal primacy.
All bishops have the fullness of Holy Orders and the Pope, under this
aspect is not superior to other bishops, he is the same as them. However, only
the Pope has the supreme power of jurisdiction which confers on him full and
unlimited power over all the other bishops.
The First Vatican Council established as a dogma of faith, the Pope’s
full, unlimited, and universal Primacy over all the bishops of the world. The primacy of jurisdiction is the Pope’s
ruling authority and includes the Pope’s teaching authority. In 1870, the First
Vatican Council, after the dogma of the Roman Primacy, promulgated the dogma on
the infallibility of the Pope’s Magisterium, under given conditions. Infallibility is that supernatural
prerogative for which the Pope and the Church cannot err in professing and
defining revealed doctrine - through special Divine assistance - attributed to
the Holy Spirit. And the Pope, who is
not infallible in governing the Church, can be infallible in his pontifical
teachings.
The Pope is not always infallible. He must want to be, and if he wants
to be, he must respect determinate rules. The conditions for infallibility were
clarified by the constitution, Pastor
aeternus: the Pope must speak as a public person, ex cathedra, with the intention of defining a truth of faith or
morals and of enforcing it as mandatory for all the faithful to believe.
If these conditions are not met it doesn’t mean the Pope is wrong. On the contrary, we must have in principle, a
prejudice in his favour. However, when the Pope is not infallible, he can
commit errors in his governing and teaching. The so-called extraordinary
Magisterium, ex cathedra by the Pope,
is always infallible. An example is represented by the two dogmas of The
Immaculate Conception and The Assumption.
But, also the Pope’s ordinary Magisterium can be infallible, when it
reiterates a truth in faith or morals which has for centuries been taught by
the Church.
This is the case of the encyclical Humane
Vitae, which is not infallible per se, itself, as it is not an ex cathedra act by the Supreme Pontiff,
but it is infallible on the point it reiterates the millenarian condemnation by
the Church on artificial contraception. If a Church teaching is universal, not
so much in space, as much as in the length of time - when it is confirmed by
Tradition - it means that it has been assisted by the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit assists the cardinals when in conclave they are electing
a Pope, and then, once elected the Pope, the Holy Spirit assists him in the
exercise of his government and Magisterium. Yet, as history teaches, despite this assistance,
unworthy Popes can be elected, who, in their private lives may have sinned,
even gravely, just as Popes who have erred in their government and even in
their Magisterium may be elected; but this mustn’t scandalize us. Even if
Providence allows a bad Pope to be elected, this happens for higher and
mysterious purposes, which will only be clarified at the end of time. The Holy Spirit knows how to draw good out of
evil.
Salvation, which theologians call justification, is born of the
mysterious encounter between the will of man and Divine grace. Those who think that in the life of a man,
the action of the Holy Spirit is sufficient for him to be saved, with no
collaboration of his own will, assume a Lutheran or Calvinist position.
Those who sustain that the Pope cannot be wrong because he is infallibly
assisted by the Holy Spirit, repeat the error on grace of the Calvinists.
Papolatry is a sin because it transforms Peter into Christ. By
attributing to the Pope the perfection and infallibility of every act and word,
means to deify him and the divination of the Pope has nothing whatever to do
with the veneration we owe to his person. The devotion to the Pope, like
devotion to Our Lady, is a pillar of Catholic spirituality. However, spirituality must have a theological
foundation and, even before that, a rational one. In order to venerate the
Pope, we must know who he is and who he isn’t.
The Pope is not, like Jesus Christ, a Man-God. In him there is no divinity
that absorbs his humanity. He doesn’t have two natures, one human and one
Divine, in one Person. The Pope has only one nature and one person, a human
one: he has the stain of original sin and at the time of his election is not confirmed in grace. He can
sin and he can be wrong, like all men, but his sins and errors are graver than
those of all other men, not only for the greater consequences they have, but
because every act of his that doesn’t correspond to Divine grace is so much
greater, inasmuch as the assistance he receives from the Holy Spirit is
greater.
Yet, besides the Roman Primacy and infallibility, there is a third truth
of faith which can be considered dogma, even if the Church has never proclaimed
it with an extraordinary decree: the
dogma of the indefectibility of the Church. [This] indefectibility is affirmed
by Jesus Christ Himself when He says: “Thou
art Peter and upon this rock I will build my Church and the gates of hell will
not prevail against it” (Matt.
16, 18).
What does indefectibility mean? It doesn’t mean that the Church cannot
make mistakes. It means, as theologians explain, that the Church will arrive at
the end of the world identical to Herself, with no change in the essence that
Jesus Christ Himself gave to Her.
Indefectibility is the supernatural property of the Church, which means
not only She will not disappear, but She won’t change, She will remain exactly
as Jesus Christ instituted Her until the end of the world. The Church will always remain with Her
characteristics, Her constitution, Her teaching - identical to Herself: one in
faith, monarchic and hierarchic in form, visibly organized, perpetually
enduring, identical for all men and all times,
with no conversion or re-conversion being possible. The decree Lamentabilis by Saint Pius X condemned
proposition 53 by the modernists, according to which: “ The organic constitution of the Church is not immutable: but Christian
society, no less than human society, should be subject to continuous
evolution”.
The Church is indefectible
and yet, in Her human part, may commit some errors and these errors, these
sufferings, can be caused by Her children and even by Her ministers.
This can happen when the institution becomes confused with the men who
represent it. The strength of the papacy doesn’t derive from Peter’s holiness,
just as Peter’s defection doesn’t signify its weakness; since it was to the
Pope’s public person, not his private person, that Jesus directed the words “ Thou art Peter and upon this Rock I will
build my Church”.
The Pope is not
Jorge Bergoglio nor Joseph Ratzinger. He
is, first of all, as the Catechism teaches us, the successor of Peter and the
Vicar of Jesus Christ on earth. This
takes nothing away from the greatness and the indefectibility of Christ’s
Mystical Body. Holiness is an ineradicable note of the Church, but it doesn’t
mean Her Pastors, even supreme pastors are impeccable, with respect to their
personal life, but even in the exercise of their mission.
When Jesus says that the gates of hell will not prevail, He didn’t
promise there wouldn’t be any attacks on the part of hell. He, rather, allows us to catch a glimpse of
the existence of a fierce battle. There will be no absence of fighting, but
there won’t be defeat [either]. The Church will triumph.
The principal work of hell is heresy.
Heresy won’t prevail over the faith of the Church.
The dogma of indefectibility refers us to two truths: the first is that the
Church lives continuously amid conflicts and subject to attacks from Her enemies:
the second is that the Church will defeat Her enemies and conquer history. Yet, without a struggle there is no victory
and this is a truth that concerns us, as it touches our lives as sons and
daughters of the Church, but even simply as men and women.
The sentence “the gates of hell will not prevail” is
the same as “In the end, My Immaculate
Heart will triumph” pronounced by Our Lady at Fatima. An event that
celebrates its ninety-ninth anniversary this year.
On January 3rd 1944, Our Lady addressed prophetic words to Sister Lucy, in
prayer before the Tabernacle.
Sister Lucy recounts: “I felt my spirit inundated by a mystery of
light that is God and in Him I saw and heard the point of a lance like a flame
that is detached touch the axis of the earth and it trembles: mountains,
cities, towns and villages with their inhabitants are buried. The sea, the
rivers and clouds exceed their boundaries, inundating and dragging with them in
a vortex, houses and people in a number that cannot be counted; it is the
purification of the world from the sin in which it is immersed. Hatred,
ambition, provoke the destructive war. After I felt my heart racing and in my
spirit a soft voice that said: ‘In time, one faith, one baptism, one Church,
Holy, Catholic, Apostolic. In eternity, Heaven!’ This word ‘Heaven’ filled my
heart with peace and happiness in such a way that, almost without being aware
of it, I kept repeating to myself for a long time: Heaven, Heaven!!”[11]
“One
faith, one baptism, one Church, Holy Catholic Apostolic” Our Lady’s words are the same as Pope Boniface
VIII in his Bull, Unam Sanctam, in
which, at the end of the Middle-Ages, he reiterated the Church’s uniqueness in
the work of redemption: “The faith
obliges us to admit and retain that there is only one Church, Holy, Catholic
and Apostolic (…) outside of which we will not find salvation, nor remission of
sins (…). In Her there is only one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism (Eph. 4,5)[12]”
And the final
exclamation:“Heaven! Heaven!” seems to refer to the dramatic choice between
Heaven, the place where souls that are saved reach eternal happiness, and hell,
the place where the damned undergo sufferings for all eternity.
The Church doesn’t open the gates of hell, but the
gates of Heaven.
The Church includes not only the Pope and bishops, but
all the faithful: priests, nuns, religious brothers, secular and lay. Divine assistance is granted to Her until the
end of the world and this will prevent Her from being lost or weakened. This
means that the Church, in history, can have moments of disorientation and
defection, but envisaged as a whole, She will never lead the faithful to
perdition.
Jesus, after His Resurrection, appears a second time
at Lake Tiberias and says to His Apostles: “Ecce
ego vobiscum sum omnibus diebus, usque ad consummationem saeculi” (Matt. 28, 20). Behold, I am with you all
days even to the end of time.
These words don’t only confirm that the Church is indefectible, given
that She is divinely assisted, but they also remind us that God didn’t give us
an impracticable law. Jesus is with us, every day, in all situations, in all
circumstances. Practicing the law is not impossible, because everything is
possible with the help of God’s grace. This is what we’d like the Pope to
remind us of, confirming us in the faith.
Never, as at this time, have we felt so much need of a foothold, a light
that directs us, a rock that we can anchor ourselves to. And this Rock can only
be Peter. Peter, not Simon. From Peter,
we seek essence, meaning and the immutable.
Men, all men, even the greatest, pass. Principles remain, and among
them, there is one that sustains all the others: the Roman Primacy. We perfectly know that only a supreme and
solemn voice can bring an end to the process of auto-demolition in act: the
voice of the Roman Pontiff, the only one to be granted the possibility of
defining the Word of Christ, making himself an infallible spokesman for the
faith. We know [also] that a Pope can contribute to the auto-demolition of the
Church, by falling even into heresy and in this case our conscience compels us
to resist him.
Amoris laetitia attributes to conscience a fundamental and unique place in the
evaluation of moral actions (§ 303). However, Amoris laetitia releases conscience from the objectivity of
morality, whereas, it is on morality and faith and reason that we want to
radicate our choices. The light of faith, like the light of reason, is not
extrinsic to us; it illuminates the heart and conscience of every single
baptized person, as conscience is nothing other than the voice of truth in our
soul. For this reason the unlimited love we have for the Pope can never bring
us to go against our conscience.
On the Day of Judgment we’ll be alone before God, with our conscience,
without Popes, or bishops, without relatives and friends, nor any possibility
of lying to ourselves and others, and God’s look will pierce and illuminate our
conscience like a flash of lightening. Those who follow their conscience with
purity of intention, having the objective data on faith and reason as their
criterion of judgment, cannot err, given that God has already illuminated the
way. He illuminates it with the gift of faith and the gift of reason, through
which faith is sustained. We cannot do anything that goes against faith and
reason; nothing that is in some way contradictory, ambiguous, equivocal, since
God is not contradictory. He is luminous, simple, He is equal to Himself, in
His unity and in His Trinity.
The Barque of the Church seems
as if it’s being engulfed by waves, and the Lord seems to be asleep, [in a way]
similar to that day of the tempest on Lake Tiberias. Let’s then turn to Him, saying, Exsurge, quare obdormis
Domine? Exsurge (Ps. 42,
23). Arise,
Lord. Why is it you appear to be like one asleep?
Perhaps this was the appeal Saint Catherine of Siena
made to Him in front of Giotto’s mosaic, in that far-off January of 1380. And
perhaps it is not a coincidence that this year, the traditional hour of
Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament for the participants in the March for Life,
takes place in the Basilica of ‘Santa
Maria sopra Minerva’, where, under the High altar, the body of Saint
Catherine of Siena rests.
In this hour of Adoration let’s ask not only for help
for the March for Life, but also for Holy Mother Church, with an intense appeal
to the Lord: “Exsurge, quare obdormis
Domine? Exsurge!”
Translation: Contributor Francesca Romana
[1] San Basilio, De
Spiritu Sancto, XXX, 77, in PG, XXXII, col. 213.
[2] S. Girolamo, Dialogus
adversus Luciferianos, n. 19, in PL, 23, col. 171. “Ingemuit totus orbis, et Arianum se esse miratus est”
[3] Vatican Insider, 14 April 2016
[4] John O’Malley, What happened at Vatican II. Life and Thoughts, Milan 2010, p. 313.
[5] Ivi, p. 47.
[6] Ivi, p. 314.
[7] Ivi, p. 51
[8]
http://www.lavie.fr/religion/catholicisme/jean-paul-vesco-dans-amoris-laetitia-le-pape-appelle-a-une-revolution-du-regard-11-04-2016-72152_16.php
[9] Antonio.
Piolanti, Pietro Parente,
Dizionario di teologia dogmatica,,
Studium, Rome 1943, pp. 45-46
[10] Father
Jean-Michel Gleize FSPX, Amoris
Laetitia, considerations on chapter 8,
in http://sspx.org/en/amoris-laetitia-sspx-gleize
[11] Carmelo de Coimbra, Um
Caminho sob o olhar de Maria,
Ediçoes Carmelo, Coimbra 2012, p. 267
[12] Boniface VIII, Bull, Unam
Sanctam , avril 18th 1302, in Denz-H,
n.870.
