On Saturday April 8th 2018, at Deerfield (Illinois) at the invitation of Catholic Family News, and on Monday April 10th at Norwalk in Connecticut, as a guest of The Society of St. Hugh of Cluny, Professor Roberto de Mattei, delivered addresses on the theme: Tu es Petrus: true devotion to the Chair of St. Peter. Here is the text of his conferences.
Tu es Petrus: True devotion to the Chair of Saint Peter
We find ourselves before one of the most critical moments that the Church has ever experienced in her history, but I am convinced that true devotion to the Chair of Saint Peter can offer us the weapons to come out of this crisis, victorious.
True devotion. Because there is false devotion to the
Chair of Peter, just as – according to Saint Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort –
there is a true and false devotion to the Most Blessed Virgin Mary.
The promise of Our Lord to Simon Peter in the city of
Caesarea Philippi is clear: Tu es Petrus, et super hanc petram aedificabo
Ecclesiam meam, et portae inferi non praevalebunt adversus eam (Matt.
16: 15-19).
“Thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my
church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”
The primacy of Peter constitutes the bedrock on which
Jesus Christ instituted His Church, and on which She will remain solid until
the end of time. The promise of the Church’s victory, however, is also the
announcement of a war. A war, which, until the end of time, will be waged by
hell against the Church. At the center of this fierce war is the Papacy. The
enemies of the Church, throughout the course of history, have always sought to
destroy the Primacy of Peter, because they have understood that it comprises
the visible foundation of the Mystical Body. The visible foundation, because the
Church has a primary and invisible foundation which is Jesus Christ, of Whom,
Peter is the Vicar.
True devotion to the Chair of Peter is, under this
aspect, devotion to the visibility of the Church, and constitutes, as Father
Faber observers, an essential part of the Christian spiritual life. [1]
The Attacks
against the Papacy in History
In
Italy, analogous ideas were expressed by the Jansenist bishop of Pistoia,
Scipione de’ Ricci. In 1786, Scipione de’ Ricci called a diocesan synod, with
the intention of reforming the Church, reducing the Pope to being the
ministerial head of the communities of the Pastors of Christ. Then the French
Revolution broke out, and Pius VI, with the letter Quod Aliquantum of March 10, 1791 condemned the Civil Constitution of
the Clergy, which affirmed that the bishops are independent of the Pope, that
priests are superior to bishops, and that parish priests are elected by the
simple faithful. With the bull Auctorem
fidei of August 28, 1794 the ecclesiological errors of the Synod of Pistoia
were also condemned.[2] Pius VI, however, was overwhelmed by the Revolution. In 1796 Bonaparte’s fleet invaded the peninsula, occupied Rome, and on February 15, 1798, proclaimed the Roman Republic. The Pope was arrested and brought to the city of Valence in France, where he died on August 29, 1799, worn out by his sufferings.
The Revolution seemed to have triumphed over the Church. The body of Pius VI was left unburied for several months, when it was brought to the local cemetery, in a trunk used as a casket for the poor, on which was written “Citizen Gianangelo Braschi – whose stage name was ‘Pope.’”The municipality of Valence notified the French Directory of the death of Pius VI, adding that the last Pope of history had been buried.
The Revolution seemed to have triumphed over the Church. The body of Pius VI was left unburied for several months, when it was brought to the local cemetery, in a trunk used as a casket for the poor, on which was written “Citizen Gianangelo Braschi – whose stage name was ‘Pope.’”The municipality of Valence notified the French Directory of the death of Pius VI, adding that the last Pope of history had been buried.
Ten years later, in 1809 the successor of Pius VI, 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, forced to
bow to his will. Never before had the Papacy appeared to the world to be so
weak. But ten years later, in 1819, Napoleon was gone from the scene, and Pius VII
had returned to the papal throne, recognized as supreme moral authority by the
European sovereigns. In that year, 1819 the book On the Pope (Du Pape) was
published in Lyon, the masterpiece of Count Joseph de Maistre, a work which had hundreds of reprints, and which
anticipated the dogma of Papal Infallibility, later defined by the First
Vatican Council.
The book On the
Pope is considered as a manifesto of counter-revolutionary thought, which
opposes itself to the Catholic liberalism of the Nineteenth and Twentieth
Centuries. Here today, I would like to be an echo of this school of Catholic
thought[3].
When in 1869, the First
Vatican Council opened, two parties clashed: on one hand, the ultramontane or counter-revolutionary
Catholics, supported by Pius the IX, who
fought for the approbation of the dogma of the Primacy of Peter and of Papal
Infallibility. Among these were illustrious bishops, like Cardinal Henry Edward
Manning, archbishop of Westminster, Louis Pie, bishop of Poitiers, Konrad
Martin, bishop of Paderborn, joined by the best theologians of the time like
Fathers Giovan Battista Franzelin, Joseph Kleutgen, and Henri Ramière. On the
opposing side were the liberal Catholics headed by Monsignor Maret, dean of the
theological faculty of Paris, and by Ignaz von Döllinger, rector of the University
of Munich.
The liberals, echoing
the conciliarist and Gallican theses, held that the authority of the Church did
not reside in the Pontiff alone, but in the Pope united to the Bishops, and
judged the dogma of Infallibility to be erroneous, or at least inopportune.
Pius IX on December 8, 1870, with the constitution Pastor aeternus, defined the dogmas of the Primacy of Peter and of
Papal Infallibility.[4] Today, these dogmas are for us a precious benchmark,
on which to found true devotion to the Chair of Peter.
The Second
Vatican Council and the New Conception of the Papacy
Liberal Catholics were defeated by the First Vatican
Council but after a century, they became the protagonists and winners of
Vatican Two.
Gallicans, Jansenists and Febronianists openly held
that the structure of the Church has to be democratic, led from the bottom, by
priests and bishops, of whom the Pope would be only a representative. The
constitution Lumen Gentium,promulgated
on November 21 1964 by the Second
Vatican Council, was like all of the Council documents, an ambiguous one, which
recognized these tendencies, but without bringing them to their final outcomes.
The Nota explicativa
praevia, [preliminary explanatory note] desired by Paul VI to save the orthodoxy of the document, was
a compromise between the principle of the primacy of Peter and that of the
collegiality of the bishops. That which took place with Lumen Gentium also occured with the conciliar constitution Gaudium et Spes, which placed on the
same level the two ends of matrimony: procreative and unitive. Equality in
nature does not exist. One of the two principles is destined to assert itself
over the other. And, as is the case in matrimony, the unitive principle
prevailed over the procreative, so in the case of the constitution of the
Church, the principle of collegiality is imposing itself on that of the Primacy
of the Roman Pontiff.
Synodality, collegiality, decentralization are the
words which today express the attempt to transform the monarchical and
hierarchical constitution of the Church into a democratic and parliamentary
structure.
A programatic “manifesto” of this new ecclesiology, is
the discourse given by Pope Francis on October 17 2015, during the ceremony for
the fiftieth anniversary of the institution of the Synod of Bishops. In that
speech, Francis used the image of the “upside-down pyramid” to describe the
“conversion” of the Papacy already announced in the exhortation Evangelii Gaudium of 2013 (no. 32).
It seems that Pope Bergoglio wants to substitute the Roman-centric Church with
a polycentric or multi-sided church, according to an image he often uses. A
renewed Papacy, conceived as a form of ministry at the service of the other
churches, renouncing the juridical Primacy or government of Peter.
To democratize the Church, the innovators seek to
strip her of her institutional aspect, and to reduce her to a
purely-sacramental dimension. It is the transition from a juridical Church to a
sacramental Church, a Church of communion. What are the consequences? On a
sacramental level, the Pope, as a bishop, is equal to all other bishops. That
which places him above all the bishops and confers upon him a supreme, full and
immediate power over the whole Church, is his juridical office. The specific munus of the Supreme Pontiff does not
consist in his power of orders, which he has in common with all bishops of the
world, but in his power of jurisdiction, or of government, which distinguishes
him from every other bishop. The office which the Pope holds, does not
represent a fourth level of Holy Orders following the diaconate, priesthood and
episcopacy. The Petrine ministry is not a sacrament, but an office, because the
Pope is the visible Vicar of Jesus Christ. The Church-Sacrament dissolves, with
the visibility of the Church, the Primacy of Peter.
The Visibility
of the Church
Jesus Christ entrusted the mission of governing to
Peter, after the Resurrection, when He said: “Feed My lambs, feed My sheep” (John 21: 15-17). With these words, Our
Lord confirmed the promise made to the Prince of the Apostles at Caesarea
Philippi, and made him His visible Vicar on earth, with the powers of supreme
head of the Church and universal Pastor. True devotion to the Chair of Peter is
not the worship of the man who occupies this Cathedra, but is the love and veneration
for the mission which Jesus Christ gave to Peter and to his successors. This
mission is a visible mission, perceptible
to the senses, as explained Leo XIII in the
encyclical Satis cognitum (1896), and
Pius XII in his encyclical Mystici
Corporis Christi (1943).
Like her Founder, the Church consists in a human
element, visible and external, and a Divine element, spiritual and invisible.
She is a society, visible and spiritual, temporal and eternal at the same time,
human for the members of which she is composed, and Divine for her origin, her
end and her supernatural means. The Church has a first visibility because she
is neither a spiritual current or a movement of ideas, but a true society
endowed with a juridical structure; and a second visibility because she is
supernatural society recognizable by her external marks, by which she is always
one, holy, Catholic, apostolic and Roman[5].
The Pope is he in whom this visibility of the Church
is concentrated and condensed. This is the meaning of the phrase of Saint
Ambrose Ubi Petrus ibi ecclesia[6], (Where Peter is, there is the Church) which
presupposes to the other saying, attributed to Saint Ignatius of Antioch: Ubi Christus, ibi ecclesia[7]. (Where Christ is, there is the Church). There is no
true Church, outside of that founded by Jesus Christ, Who continues to guide
and assist her invisibly, while her Vicar visibly governs her on earth.
Today, there is a modernist infiltration inside the
Church, but there are not two churches. This is the reason why Fr. Gleize
judges speaking of the “Conciliar Church,” as inaccurate, affirming that two
churches, the Roman and the Conciliar, do not exist[8]. And this is also the reason for which we need to be
careful of speaking of the “Bergoglian church,” or of “the new Church.” The
Church today is occupied by churchmen who betray or deform the message of
Christ, but it has not been substituted by another church. There is only one
Catholic Church, in which today cohabitate in a confused and fragmentary way,
different and counterpoised theologies and philosophies. It is more correct to
speak of a Bergoglian theology, of a Bergoglian philosophy, and, if one wishes,
of a Bergoglian religion (or irreligion!), without coming to the point of
defining Pope Bergoglio, the cardinals, the Curia and the bishops of the whole
world as a “Bergoglian church.” Because, if we were to imagine that the Pope,
the cardinals, the Curia, the world’s bishops comprise as a whole, a new
Church, we would have to legitimately ask ourselves: “where is the Church of
Christ? Where is her social and supernatural visibility?
And this is the principal argument against
sedevacantism. But it’s also an argument against that inflated traditionalism,
which while not declaring the vacancy of the Seat of Peter, thinks itself able
to kick out of the Church the Pope, cardinals and bishops, and de facto reduces the Mystical Body of
Christ to a purely-spiritual and invisible reality.
The Error of
Papalotry
The Church, as a visible society, needs a visible
hierarchy, a Vicar of Christ who governs her visibly. The visibility is, above
all, that of the Chair of Peter, on which 266 Popes have sat until today.
The Pope is a person who occupies a chair, a cathedra:
there is no cathedra without a person, but the danger exists that the person
will lead others to forget the existence of the chair, that is of the juridical
institution which precedes the person.
Papalotry is a false devotion which does not see in
the reigning Pope one of the 265 successors
of Peter, but considers him to be a new Christ on earth, who personalizes,
reinterprets, reinvents and imposes the Magisterium of his predecessors, expanding
and perfecting the doctrine of Christ.
Papalotry, before it is a theological error, is a
deformed psychological and moral attitude. Papalotrists are generally
conservatives or moderates who deceive themselves on the possibility of
reaching good results in life without a fight, without effort. The secret of
their life, is always to adapt themselves, to bring the best out of every
situation. Their watchword is that everything is calm, there’s no need to worry
about anything. Reality, for them, has never the characters of a drama. The
moderates don’t want life to be a drama, because that would oblige them to
assume responsibilities which they don’t want to assume. But because life is
often dramatic, their sense of reality is turned upside down, into an absolute
unreality. Faced with the current crisis in the Church, the moderate
instinctively negates it. And the most effective way to tranquilize one’s own
conscience, is by affirming that the Pope is always right, even when he
contradicts himself or his predecessors. At this point, error inevitably passes
from the psychological level to the doctrinal one, and it turns into papalotry,
namely to the position which states that the Pope must always be obeyed, no
matter what he says or does, because the Pope is the only and infallible law of
the Catholic Faith.
On the doctrinal level, papalotry has its ideological
roots in the voluntarism of William of Okcham (1285-1387) who, paradoxically,
was a ferocious adversary of the Papacy. While Saint Thomas Aquinas affirmed
that God, Absolute Truth and Supreme Good, could not will nor do anything
contradictory, Ockham held that God could will and do anything, even evil,
paradoxically, because evil and good do not exist in themselves, but are made
that way by God. For Saint Thomas, something is commanded or forbidden inasmuch
as it is ontologically good or evil; for the followers of Ockham, the opposite
goes: something is good or bad, inasmuch as God has commanded or forbidden it.
Once this principle is admitted, not only do morals become relative, but the
representative of God on earth, the Vicar of Christ, can then exercise his
supreme authority in an absolute and arbitrary manner and the faithful cannot
but pay him unconditional obedience.
In reality, obedience to the Church entails for the
subject the duty of fulfilling not the will of the superior, but only the will
of God. Because of this, obedience is never blind and unconditional. It has its
limits in the natural and Divine Laws, and in the Tradition of the Church, of
which the Pope is guardian and not creator.
For the papalotor, the Pope is not the Vicar of Christ
on earth, who has the duty of handing on the doctrine he has received, but is a
successor of Christ who perfects the doctrine of his predecessors, adapting it
to the changing of the times. The doctrine of the Gospel is in perpetual
evolution, because it coincides with the magisterium of the reigning Pontiff.
The “living” magisterium substitutes the perennial Magisterium, expressed by
pastoral teaching which changes daily, and has its regula fidei (rule of faith) in the subject of the authority and
not in the object of the transmitted truth.
A consequence of papalotry is the pretext of
canonizing all and each of the Popes of the past, so that retroactively, each
words of theirs, every act of governing is “infallibilized.” However, this
concerns only the Popes following Vatican II and not those who preceded that
Council.
At this point, arises the question: the golden era of
the history of the Church is the Middle Ages, and yet the only medieval Popes
canonized by the Church are Gregory VII and Celestine V. In the Twelfth and
Thirteenth centuries, there were great Popes, but none of these were canonized.
For seven hundred years, between the Fourteenth and Twentieth centuries, only
Saint Pius V and Saint Pius X were canonized. Were all the others unworthy
Popes and sinners? Certainly not. But heroism in the governing of the Church is
an exception not the rule, and if all the Popes were saints, then nobody is a
saint. Sanctity is such an exception, that it loses meaning when it becomes the
rule. There is a doubt, that today they want to canonize all the Popes, because
they don’t believe in anyone’ sanctity.
For those who want to learn more about this problem, they
can read to their benefit the article published in The Remnant, which Christopher Ferrara dedicated to “The Canonization Crisis.”[9]
Is a
Papal Diararchy Possible?
Papalotry does not exist in an abstract sense: today,
for example, we need to speak in a more precise way of Francisolatry, but also
of Benedictolotry, as Miguel Ángel Yáñez observed well, on Adelante la fé [10]. This papalotry can come to
counterpoising Pope against Pope: the followers, for example, of Pope Francis
against those of Pope Benedict, but also of looking for harmony and coexistence
among the two Popes, imagining a possible division of their roles. What took
place on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the election of Pope Francis,
was significant and unsettling. All of the media’s attention was focused on the
case of a letter of Benedict XVI to Pope Francis: a letter, which turned out to
be manipulated and caused the resignation of the head of Vatican
communications, Monsignor Dario Viganò. The
discussion, revealed however, the existence of a false premise, accepted by
all: the existence of a sort of papal diararchy, of which there’s Pope Francis
who carries out its functions, and then there’s another Pope, Benedict, who
serves the Chair of Peter through prayer, and if necessary, with counsel. The
existence of the two Popes is admitted as a done deal: only the nature of their
relationship is argued. But the truth is that it is impossible that two Popes
can exist. The Papacy is not dismountable: there can be only one Vicar of Christ.
Benedict XVI had the ability to renounce the papacy,
but consequently, would have had to give up the name of Benedict XVI, dressing
in white, and the title of Pope emeritus: in a word, he would have had to
definitively cease from being Pope, also leaving Vatican City. Why did he not
do so? Because Benedict XVI seems to be convinced of still being Pope, although
a Pope who has renounced the exercise of the Petrine ministry. This conviction
is born of a profoundly-erroneous ecclesiology, founded on a sacramental and
not juridical conception of the Papacy. If the Petrine munus is a sacrament and not a juridical office, then it has an
indelible character, but in this case it would be impossible to renounce the
office. The resignation presupposes the revocability of the office, and is then
irreconcilable with the sacramental vision of the Papacy.
Cardinal Brandmüller rightly judged as unintelligible
the attempt to establish a sort of contemporaneous parallelism of a reigning
Pope and a praying Pope. “A two-headed Pope would be a monstrosity”[11], says Cardinal Brandmüller, who adds: “Canon Law does
not recognize the figure of a Pope Emeritus” (...)
“The resignee, consequently”, “is no longer Bishop of Rome, not even a
cardinal.”[12]
Regarding the doubts, then, about the election of Pope
Francis, Professor Geraldina Boni[13], remembers that Canonists have always taught that the
peaceful “universalis ecclesiae adhaesio”
(universal ecclesial acceptance) is a sign and infallible effect of a valid
election and legitimate papacy, and the adhesion or acceptance of Pope Francis
by the people of God has not yet been doubted by any of the cardinals who
participated in the Conclave. The acceptance of a Pope by the universal Church
is an infallible sign of his legitimacy, and heals at the root every defect of
the papal election (for example, illegal machinations, conspiracies, et
cetera). This is also a consequence of visible character of the Church and of
the Papacy.
A nemine est judicandus, nisi a fide devius...
The juridical character of the Petrine office is
described well by a canonist, above all suspicion, the former rector of the
Gregorian University, Jesuit Father Gianfranco Ghirlanda, when during the time
of transition between the last two pontificates, dedicated a clear article in Civiltà Cattolica to “The Vacancy of the
Roman See.” “The vacancy of the Roman See occurs in case of the cessation of
the office on the part of the Roman Pontiff, which happens for four reasons: 1)
Death, 2) Sure and perpetual insanity or complete mental infirmity; 3) Notorious
apostasy, heresy, schism; 4) Resignation.”
Father Ghirlanda explains: “In the first case, the
Apostolic See is vacant from the moment of death of the Roman Pontiff; in the
second and in the third from the moment of the declaration on the part of the
cardinals; in the fourth from the moment of the renunciation."
At this point, Father Ghirlanda lingers on the case of
a heretical Pope. There is no reference to a Pope, since in the month of
February 2013, no one had yet been elected. Father Ghirlanda refers to an
“academic example”: “There is the case, admitted by doctrine, of notorious
apostasy, heresy and schism, into which the Roman Pontiff could fall, but as a
“private doctor,” that does not demand the assent of the faithful, because by
faith in the personal infallibility that the Roman Pontiff has in the carrying
out of his office, and therefore in the assistance of the Holy Ghost, we must
say that he cannot make heretical affirmations, wishing to utilize his
primatial authority, because if he were to do so, he would fall ipso iure from his office. However, in
such cases, because ‘the first see is judged by no one’ (Canon 1404) no one
could depose the Roman Pontiff, but only a declaration of the fact would be
had, which would have to be done by the Cardinals, at least of those present in
Rome. Such an eventuality, however, although foreseen in doctrine, is held to
be totally unlikely, by the intervention of Divine Providence in favor of the
Church”[14].
Father Ghirlanda is in this exposition, neither a
traditionalist nor a progressivist, but a scholar who has gathered a thousand
years of canonical tradition.
If, in the field of philosophy and theology, the
undisputed summit of Christian thought is represented by Saint Thomas Aquinas,
in the field of Canon Law, the equivalent of that School, is represented by
Gratian (Magister Gratianus) and his disciples.
Recalling an assertion of Saint Boniface, bishop of Mains, Gratian affirmed that the Pope “a nemine est iudicandus, nisi deprehendatur a fide devius” (is
judged by no one, except when he deviates from the Faith).[15]
This principle is reiterated in Summa decretorum, by
Huguccio, or Hugh of Pisa[16], considered the most famous magister decretorum, master of decrees, of the XII Century.
Father Salvatore Vacca, who traced the history of the
axiom Prima Sedes a nemine judicatur
(the First See is judged by no one), recalled that “the thesis of the
possibility of a heretical Pope would be held in consideration... during the
whole of the Middle Ages, until the time of the Western Schism (1379-1417)[17].
In the case of a heretical Pope, the principle according to which Prima Sedes a
nemine judicatur , is not violated, in the first place because, according to canonical
tradition, this principle admits only one exception, the case of heresy; in the
second place because the cardinals would be limited to only certifying the fact
of heresy, as would happy in the case of the loss of mental faculties, without
exercising any deposition of the Roman Pontiff. The cessation of the primatial
office would only be acknowledged and declared by them.
Theologians argue whether the loss of the pontificate would arrive at the
moment in which the Pope falls into heresy or only in the case of the heresy
becoming manifest or notorious, and publicly spread.
Arnaldo Xavier da Silveira[18] holds that although an incompatibility in radice (at the root) exists between
heresy and papal jurisdiction, the Pope does not lose his office until the time
when his heresy becomes manifest. The Church being a visible and perfect
society, the loss of the faith by her visible Head would need to be a public
fact. As a tree can live for a certain time after its roots have been severed,
so can jurisdiction be maintained precariously by the possessor, even after a
fall into heresy. Jesus Christ maintains the person of the heretical Pontiff in
his jurisdiction provisionally, until the Church recognizes the deposition.
What is certain, is that recognizing the possibility
for a Pope to fall into heresy does not mean in any way, diminishing the love
for and devotion to the Papacy. It means admitting that the Pope is the Vicar,
not always impeccable and not always infallible, of Jesus Christ, only Head of
the Mystical Body of the Church.
Against Catacombism
The theme of the visibility
of the Church is an argument to combat another temptation widespread today:
that of catacombism. Catacombism is the attitude of those who retreat from the
battlefield and hide themselves in the illusion of being able to survive
without fighting. Catacombism is the refusal of the militant conception of
Christianity.
The catacombist does
not wish to fight, because he is convinced of having already lost the battle;
he accepts the situation of the inferiority of Catholics as a given, without
going back to the causes which have determined it. But if Catholics today are
in the minority, it is because they have lost a series of battles; they have
lost these battles because they have not fought them; they have not fought them
because they have removed the very idea of the “enemy,” turning their backs on
the Augustinian concept of the two cities fighting each other in history, the
only concept that can offer us an explanation of what is happening, and what
has happened. If one rejects this militant concept, one accepts the principle
of irreversibility of the historic process and from catacombism one inevitably
passes to progressivism and modernism. The catacombists oppose the
Constantinian Church to the Minority and Persecuted Church of the first three centuries.
But Pius XII in his address to Catholic Action on December 8, 1947, refutes
this theory, explaining that the Catholics of the first three centuries were
not catacombists, but conquerors.
“Not rarely has the
Church of the first centuries been represented as “the Church of the
catacombs,” as if the Christians of that time were used to living there,
hidden. There is nothing more inaccurate: those subterranean necropolises,
destined principally for the burial of the faithful departed, did not serve as
places of refuge, if not, perhaps, sometimes, in terms of violent persecutions.
The life of Christians, in those centuries marked by blood, was carried out in
the midst of the streets and houses, in the open. These “did not live secluded
from the world; they frequented, as others, the forum, the baths, the
workshops, the shops, the markets, the public squares; they exercised their
professions as sailors, soldiers, farmers and merchants.” (Tertullian, Apologeticum, c. 42). Wishing to portray that
valorous Church, always ready to live on the forefront, a community of draft
dodgers, hiding themselves for embarrassment or cowardice, would be an insult
to their virtues. They were fully aware of their duty of conquering the world
for Christ, to transform private and public life, according to the doctrine and
law of the Divine Savior, where a new civilization could be born, another Rome,
springing forth from the tombs of the two Princes of the Apostles. And they
reached their goal. Rome and the Roman Empire became Christian.”
Before, it was said
that the Sacrament of Confirmation made us “soldiers of Christ,” and Pius XII,
addressing the bishops of the United States said: “The Christian, if he does
honor to the name he bears, is always an apostle; it is not permitted to the
Soldier of Christ that he quit the battlefield, because only death puts an end
to his military service.”[19]
We need to recover this
militant concept of the Christian life.
The Strength of
Silence and the Strength of Speech
There are those who say that we need to give up action and the fight,
because by now there’s nothing left to do, on a human level. We need to wait on
an extraordinary intervention of Divine Providence. Certainly it is God, and He
alone, Who guides and changes history. But God requires the cooperation of men
and if men cease working, Divine Grace will also cease to act. In fact, as
Ambrose observed, “the Divine benefits are not passed to he who sleeps, but to
he who watches.”[20].
There are those who say that we need to forego not
only action, but even speech. Sometimes we meet someone who with their finger
at their lips, and eyes raised to Heaven, tells us that we need to keep quiet
and pray. Nothing else. But it would be an error to make silence a rule of
behavior, because on the day of judgement, we will answer not only for vain
words, but also for guilty silences.
There are vocations to silence, like those of many
contemplative monks and nuns; but Catholics, from Pastors to the last of the
faithful, have the duty of testifying to their Faith, with words and example.
It was through the Word that the Apostles won over the world, and the Gospel
was spread from the one end of the earth to the other.
Saint Athanasius and Saint Hilary did not remain
silent against the Arians, Saint Catherine of Siena did not keep silent in
front of the Popes of her time, and, in recent
times, these did not keep quiet but spoke: the bishop of Münster, Clemens
August von Galen faced
with Nazism, and Cardinal Josef Mindszenty, primate of Hungary, confronted by
communism.
Today, moreover, silence isn’t used as a moment of recollection and of
reflection which prepares one for battle, but as a political strategy, an
alternative to fighting. A silence which predisposes us for dissimulation, to
hypocrisy and final surrender. Day after day, month after month, year after
year, the politics of silence has become a jail which imprisons many
conservatives. In this sense, silence is not only a sin of today, but is also a
chastisement for yesterday's sins. Today, those who for too many years remained
silent, are prisoners of silence. However, he is free, who in the course of the
last fifty years has not kept silent, but has spoken openly and without
compromises, because only the Truth makes us free. (John 8:32).
Tempus est
tacendi, tempus loquendi says Ecclesiaste (3:7): “There is a time to
keep silence, and a time to speak.” And today is the moment to speak.
To speak means, above all, to witness publicly one’s
own fidelity to the Gospel and to the immutable Catholic truths, denouncing the
errors which counteract it. In times of crisis, the rule is that which Benedict
XV in the encyclical Ad beatissimi
Apostolorum Principis of November 1, 1914 declared against the modernists:
“It is Our will that the law of our forefathers should still be held sacred:
"Let there be no innovation; keep to what has been handed down”: nihil innovetur nisi quod traditum est.”[21] Sacred Tradition remains the criterium for discerning
that which is Catholic and that which is not, rendering resplendent the visible
marks of the Church. Tradition is the faith of the Church that the Popes have
maintained and transmitted throughout the course of the centuries. But
Tradition comes before the Pope and not the Pope before Tradition.
Limiting ourselves, then, to a generic denunciation of
the errors which oppose the Tradition of the Church, isn’t enough. It is for us
to call out by name, all those who inside the Church profess a theology, a
philosophy, a morality, a spirituality, in contrast with the perennial
Magisterium of the Church, no matter what office they may occupy. And today we
must admit that the Pope himself promotes and propagates errors and heresies in
the Church. We need to have the courage to say this, with all the veneration
which is due to the Pope. True devotion to the Papacy expresses itself in an attitude
of filial resistance, as happened in the Filial
Correction addresses to Pope Francis in 2017.
But there isn’t only a tempus loquendi (a time to speak). There is also a modus loquendi (way to speak), a way
with which the Catholic expresses himself. The correction has to be filial, as
it was, respectful, devout, without sarcasm, without irreverence, without
contempt, without bitter zeal, without gratification, without pride, with a
profound spirit of charity, which is love for God and love for the Church.
In the crisis of our days, every profession of faith
and declaration of fidelity which disregards the responsibility of Pope
Francis, lacks strength, clarity and sincerity. We need to have the courage to
say: Holy Father, you are the first one responsible for the confusion which
exists today in the Church; Holy Father, you are the first one responsible for
the heresies which are circulating in the Church today.
The responsibility, finally, cannot not involve the
cardinals who keep quiet, and who remaining silent, do not perform their duty
as counselors and collaborators of the Pope.
But it’s not enough to denounce the Pastors who
demolish, or favor the demolition of the Church. We must reduce to the
indispensable minimum the ecclesiastical cohabitation with them, as happens in
an agreement of matrimonial separation. If a father exercises illicit physical
or moral violence toward his wife and children, the wife, although recognizing
the validity of the marriage itself, and without requesting an annulment, to
protect herself and her children, can request a separation. The Church permits
it. Giving up living habitually together means distancing oneself from the
teachings and practices of the evil Pastors, refusing to participate in the
programs and activities promoted by them.
But we must not forget that the Church cannot
disappear. Therefore, it is necessary to support the apostolate of Shepherds
who remain faithful to the traditional teachings of the Church, participating
in their initiatives and encouraging them to speak, to act and to guide the
disoriented flock.
It is time to separate ourselves from evil Pastors,
and to unite ourselves to the good ones, inside of the one Church in which also
live, in the same field, the wheat and the cockle. (Matthew 13:24-30),
remembering that the Church is visible, and cannot save herself, outside of her
legitimate Pastors.
The Church is visible and will save herself with the
Pope, and not without the Pope. We need to renew the bond of love and
veneration which joins us to the Successor of Peter above all with prayer, so
Jesus Christ will give him and all prelates the necessary strength not to
betray the sacred deposit of the Faith, and, if this were to take place, to
return to the guidance of the abandoned sheepfold.
And yet, if the Vicar
of Christ would betray his mission, the Holy Ghost would never cease to assist,
not even for a moment, His Church, in which, even in times of defection from
the Faith, a remnant, even a small one, of Pastors and faithful will continue
to always keep and pass on Tradition, trusting in the Divine Promise: “I am
with you all days, even to the consummation of the world.” (Matthew 28:20).
Pius XII in his encyclical Fulgens radiatur, of March 21, 1947, for the Fourteenth centenary
of the death of Saint Benedict said that: “Whoever considers his (Saint
Benedict’s) celebrated life and studies in the light of the truth of history,
the gloomy and stormy times in which he lived, will without doubt realize the
truth of the divine promise which Christ made to the Apostles and to the
society He founded “I am with you all days even to the consummation of the
world.” [Matthew 28:20]. At no time
in history does this promise lose its force; it is verified in the course of
all ages flowing, as they do, under the guidance of Divine Providence. But when
enemies assail the Christian name more fiercely, when the fateful barque of
Peter is tossed about more violently and when everything seems to be tottering
with no hope of human support, it is then that Christ is present, Bondsman,
Comforter, Source of supernatural power, and raises up fresh champions to
protect Catholicism, to restore it to its former vigor, and give it even
greater increase under the inspiration and help of heavenly grace.”
For those who remain faithful to Tradition in times of
crisis, their Model is the Most Blessed Virgin Mary, Who alone kept the Faith
on Holy Saturday, and Who, after the Ascension of Our Lord into Heaven, did not
keep silent but sustained with all the firmness and clearness of Her words, the
nascent Church. Her Heart was, and remains, the Treasure Chest of the Church.[22]
Those truly devoted to Mary, about whom Saint Louis
Marie Grignion de Montfort speaks, are also the true devotees of the Papacy,
who in times of defection by the authorities, and the obscuring of the Faith,
will not hesitate to brandish “the two-edged sword of the Word of God” (Hebrews 4:12), with which “they will
pierce through and through, for life and for death, those against whom they are
sent by Almighty God.”[23]
Their battle against the enemies of God will bring
closer the triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, which will also be the
triumph of the Papacy and of the restored Church.
TRANSLATED BY
BRENDAN YOUNG
[1]
Frederick William Faber, La devozione e fedeltà al Papa, in AA. VV., Il Papa nel pensiero degli scrittori
religiosi e politici, La Civiltà Cattolica, Roma 1927, II, pp. 231-238.
[2] Denz-H, 2601-2612.
[3]
For a synthesis of this thought, see Plinio
Corrȇa de Oliveira, Revolution and
Counter Revolution, The American
Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, Property, York (PA) 1993.
[4] Denz-H, 3050-3075.
[5] Louis Billot, De Ecclesia
Christi,I,
Prati, Giachetti, 1909, pp. 49-51.
[6] S. Ambrose, Expositio in
Psalmos, 40.
[7]
S. Ignatius of Antiochia, Smirnnses, 8, 2.
[8] Fr. Jean-Michel Gleize, SSPX,
“Angelus”, July 2013.
[9]
https://remnantnewspaper.com/web/index.php/articles/item/3753-the-canonization-crisis-part-1
[10] https://adelantelafe.com/benedictolatras/
[11] Walter
Brandmüller, Renuntiatio Papae. Alcune
riflessioni storico-canonistiche
(“Archivio Giuridico”, 3-4 (2016), pp. 655- 674, p. 660.
[12] Ivi, pp. 661, 660.
[13]
Geraldina Boni, Sopra una rinuncia. La decisione di papa
Benedetto XVI e il diritto, Bononia University Press, Bologna 2015.
[14]
Gianfranco Ghirlanda, Cessazione dall’ufficio di Romano
Pontefice,
"La Civiltà Cattolica" q. n 3905 March, 2 th 2013, p. 445.
[15] Gratianus, Decretum,
Pars I, Dist. XL.
[16] Huguccio pisanus, Summa Decretorum , Pars I, Dist.. XL, c. 6.
[17]
Salvatore Vacca,
Prima Sedes a nemine judicatur. Genesi e
sviluppo storico dell’assioma fino al Decreto di Graziano, Pontificia
Università Gregoriana, Roma 1993, p. 254.
[18] Arnaldo
Xaveir da Silveira, Ipotesi teologica di un Papa
eretico,
Solfanelli, Chieti 2016.
[19] Pio XII,
Discours to the Bishops of United States of 1 November 1939.
[20] S. Ambrose, Expos. Evang. sec. Luc., IV, 49.
[21] S. Stephen I, Letter
to Saint San Cyprien, in Denz-H, n. 110. 4.
[22] S. Bonaventura, De Nativitate B. Virginis Mariae Sermo V, in Opera, cit., IX, p. 717).
[23] S. Luigi
Maria Grignion di Montfort,Trattato della vera devozione
alla Santissima Vergine Maria, n. 57.
