Roberto de Mattei
Corrispondenza Romana
August 7, 2019
In the
momentous battle presently going on inside the Church a tower has fallen: The
Institute of John Paul II. So as to contextualize the event, the article by
George Weigel which carries the title - The Vandals sack Rome again”* is
helpful. According to Weigel, after the
Second Vatican Council a “War of the Conciliar Succession” opened
between “two groups of previously-allied
reformist theologians”, identified by two periodicals, Concilium and Communio:
the former ultra-progressive, the latter moderate. At stake was the battle “for the control of faculty slots in theology
departments around the world”.
The election of John Paul II,
who appointed Joseph Ratzinger Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of
the Faith, marked the predominance of the moderates over the extremists. The latter, from 1978 onwards, found themselves “on the outs in the great game of ecclesiastical politics – even though
they continued to maintain an iron grip on most theological faculty
appointments and on a lot of theological publishing”. John Paul II – the
American writer explains – did not purge the ecclesiastic universities of
progressive professors, but instead promoted the foundation of new institutes
like the Ateneo di Santa Croce dell’Opus Dei (and we’d add: Regina Apostolorum of the
Legions of Christ). Pope Wojtyla was
in fact “quietly
confident that good coinage – good theology – would eventually drive out bad
ethical coinage”.
The John Paul
Institute for Marriage and the Family was the “linchpin” of this cultural operation, above all to further the
reception of John Paul II’s encyclical, Veritatis splendor (1993) by the entire Church. The
progressives, whom Weigel defines as “stubborn”
and “ruthless” men, waited for the
right moment to settle accounts. The occasion presented itself in the last few
weeks, when the new John Paul II Institute - of which Archbishop Vincenzo
Paglia is the Grand Chancellor - lead a Stalinistic-style purgation against
John Paul II’s theological and pastoral legacy. The most alarming case was the
suppression – after 38 years of life -
of the Cathedra of Fundamental Moral Theology, occupied by Monsignor
Livio Melina. The conclusion, which is also the incipit of Weigels’s article,
is that “An
exercise in raw intellectual vandalism has been underway in Rome since July 23:
what was originally known as the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Marriage
and the Family has been peremptorily but systematically stripped of its most
distinguished faculty, and its core courses in fundamental moral theology have
been cancelled “.
There is a gap however in our
friend George Weigel’s construction that that we will try to fill in. First of
all, it should be remembered that the twenty-seven years of John Paul II’s
pontificate were followed by Benedict XVI’s eight years in the governing of the
Church. In all, thirty-five years of ecclesiastic predominance by moderates.
How could it happen, notwithstanding this long period of reformist governance,
that the Jacobins were able to take power, exercising at present, merciless
repression against their adversaries?
The doubt arises that this was
due to the intrinsic weakness of the moderate front. Doctrinal weakness, inasmuch as it was based on the attempt to justify
an event at any cost, such as the Second Vatican Council, which bears the most
serious responsibilities, beginning with
its failure to condemn Communism at a historical time when this constituted the
gravest threat to the Church and the West.
Strategic weakness, given
that those who are convinced of defending the truth, cannot tolerate that error
has continued to be taught for decades in the ecclesiastic universities and
seminaries, as happened during the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict
XVI. The strategy of promoting the truth, avoiding the condemnation of error,
does not pay. The facts have not confirmed this strategy, but they have
corroborated the law of Thomas Gresham (1519-1579), whereby bad money drives
out good - and not vice-versa.
Benedict XVI’s renunciation of
the papacy on February 11th 2013, was, for that matter, the declaration of the completed failure of this
strategy. The hermeneutic of continuity proved to be incapable of
countering ecclesiastic Jacobinism, which has no interpretative line of
theological documents, but a project to gain power through men and facts. Pope
Francis’ election was the inevitable outcome of the historical failure of
moderate reform.
Jorge Mario Bergoglio pits his
“living magisterium” of the Church, against those who invoke “the living
magisterium” of the Second Vatican Council. If a Council of the Church is always right,
how can a Pope be faulted by presenting himself as an incarnation of that
event? Pope Francis, for his part, like all Jacobins, detests more than
anything the ambiguity and contradictions of the moderates, whereas he respects
and fears the coherence of the counter-revolutionaries. Further, if the John
Paul II Institute is being sacked today by vandals, it is precisely because it
did not resist Pope Francis openly, when it was the time to do so.
The exhortation Amoris Laetitia of March 19th 2016, had the clear aim of
destroying Veritatis splendor and the
moral teaching of John Paul II, to replace it with a new moral paradigm. The
professors at the John Paul II Institute, in the name of Veritatis splendor and of their own personal story, should have
stood up as one man against this attack on Catholic morality, above all, after
Pope Francis’ refusal to receive the Cardinal authors of the dubia in audience and after the rescript
of July 5th 2017, whereby the authentic interpretation of the papal
document was that of the Argentine Bishops. Pope Francis’ intention was, and is, clear to
everyone. None of the theologians of the Institute however signed the Correctio filialis de haeresibus propagati of September 24th 2017, nor did
they produce any document wherein Amoris
laetitia was subjected to severe criticism.
On August 3rd, in an interview
with La Verità, Monsignor Livio
Melina presents himself as a victim of unjust purgation, asserting that he had
been struck for interpreting Amoris
laetitia in the light of the Church’s Magisterium. The problem is that Amoris laetitia cannot be interpreted in
the light of the perennial Magisterium, given that it proposes a new moral
paradigm, irreconcilable with Veritatis
splendor. Pope Francis is convinced
of it, and so are we. Perhaps even Monsignor Melina is convinced of it too, but
he has never said so publically. This silence did not avert his decapitation. Why be surprised? Hasn’t the history of the
French Revolution taught us anything?
Today the battle requires men
who fight with clarity pro or contra the Tradition of the Church.
But if it happens that a Pope
takes a stand against Tradition, we must respectfully disassociate ourselves
from this, remaining firmly inside the Church, from which he, not
us, seems to want to separate himself. A gifted theologian like
Monsignor Melina has all the intellectual instruments to understand how it is
possible to resist the doctrinal and pastoral errors of a Pope without ever
lacking in the love and devotion we must reserve for the Cathedra of
Peter. The time for minimalism is over.
The time has come when the Truth and error must look each other in the eye,
without compromise. This is the only possibility the Truth has of winning.
We need men who fight and if necessary fall - but with honour.
Translation:
Contributor Francesca Romana
