Having now finished the work of analysis on individual texts, Don Leone embarks on part III of the book with a synthesis of the conclusions already drawn, from the point of view first of Metaphysics, then of Theology and lastly of Morality. In the Metaphysical section, he classifies the Council’s errors according to offences against 10 basic metaphysical principles and provides over 100 examples thereof. We offer below a first section of this study – as incontrovertible as it is terrifying. F.R.
Part 3
OVERVIEW
Chapter 9
ANALYSIS OF THE COUNCIL
‘And the
shapes of the locusts were like unto horses prepared for battle. And on their
heads were, as it were, crowns like gold: and their faces were as the faces of
men. And they had hair as the hair of women: and their teeth were as lions. And
they had breastplates as breastplates of iron: and the noise of their wings was
as the noise of chariots and many horses running to battle. And they had tails
like to scorpions: and there were stings in their tails.’
Apc. 9, 7-10
‘And the shapes of the locusts were like unto horses prepared for battle…’
(The
The Venerable Bede, in his commentary on the Apocalypse writes that the
false gold of the locusts’ crowns imitates the real gold of the Elders
‘fabricating false triumphs for themselves from a hollow victory… In the human
face, he denotes the pretense of reason; in the hair of women, unstable and
womanish ways; in the teeth of lions, wont both to mangle and carry an innate
stench, the ferocity of their mind and the fame of their evil teaching; in the
breastplates of iron, hearts stubbornly set against the truth. These having the
appearance indeed of godliness, but denying the power of it, come in the clothing
of sheep, but inwardly are ravening wolves… Just as scorpions approach softly,
and striking with its tail, so the sly wickedness of evil people seems
mild-mannered and harmless on the surface, but when it secretly destroys, it
brings death, hidden, as it were, in its tail’ [1].
We proceed to
evaluate the Council according to the following schemes:
A. Metaphysical Analysis;
B. Theological Analysis;
C. Moral Analysis.
A. Metaphysical Analysis: The Attack on Ten Metaphysical Principles
In the
Introduction to this book we offered certain fundamental elements for a
metaphysical critique of the Council texts. We proceed to offer a more precise and detailed analysis of them
in the light of the same metaphysics, that is the metaphysics of
Aristotelian-Scholasticism. This Metaphysics is otherwise known as the
Philosophy of Being, or the Philosophy of Common Sense, meaning respectively
that it is the philosophy that has as its object Being itself: Being as Being, and second, that it is the
philosophy that results from reflection on Being with the assistance of common
sense. Taking these two propositions as axiomatic, we proceed to show how the
Council errs in offending against ten of the principles of what is ostensibly
the one, true Metaphysics [2].
a) There is such a thing as Being and it can be known in
this life;
b) Being can be adequately expressed in this life;
c) Truth is the correspondence between Being and the
intellect;
d) The True has logical priority over the Good;
e) Being is One;
f) Being is Immutable;
g) Being is Supernatural [3];
h) There is such a thing as the Principle of
Non-Contradiction;
i) There is such a thing as a Nature / Essence;
j) There is such a thing as Causality.
We proceed to
consider each principle in turn.
a)
There is such a
thing as Being and it can be known in this life
The true
Metaphysics is realist, and holds, in other words, that there is such a thing
as objective reality, namely Being, and that a rational subject is capable of
knowing it. The Council speaks instead of ‘the search for Truth.’ It harbors
doubts, it is skeptical, about Being, about Truth: Truth, namely, of the
supernatural order, the Faith. Why otherwise does it not state the Faith with
courage and with pride? Did Our Blessed Lord not die for love of us? Did our
ancestors not die for love of Him? Is this nothing to them? How otherwise can
we explain:
1. its failure to proclaim before the non-Catholic
Christian denominations that the Catholic Faith is the one true Faith [4];
2. its failure to proclaim before the followers of the
other religions that it is the one true Religion [5];
3. its failure to proclaim the doctrine that Outside the
Church there is no Salvation;
4. its failure to teach that the Church alone has a right
to Religious Liberty [6];
5. its failure to fulfill the Church’s duty to condemn
falsehood and error [7];
6. its failure to preach the doctrine of Christ the King
to the World;
7. its failure explicitly to condemn Communism [8];
8. its failure explicitly to condemn contraception and
the impurity of the modern age [9].
St. Cyprian
writes: ‘…and does he think that he is a Christian who is either ashamed or
afraid to be a Christian? How can he be one with Christ who either blushes or
fears to belong to Christ?’ [10]
b)
Being can be Adequately Expressed in this Life
Metaphysics
holds that a rational subject is capable of expressing Being, but the Council
doubts this, declaring [11]:
‘the deposit and the truths of the faith are one thing, the manner of
expressing them… is quite another.’ This doubt can explain why the Council
adopted a discursive and not a scientific language in its documents. It may not
be intent on expressing doctrines dogmatically, but nevertheless it is trying
to teach; and to teach anything at all clarity and precision are indispensable.
The consequences of its skepticism are seen throughout its texts in their
obscurantism and their failure to provide definitions. The deepest reason for
this, as we explained in section 2 above, is the Council’s denial of essences
which we shall examine in detail in subsection (i) below.
c)
Truth is the Correspondence between Being and the
Intellect
The true
metaphysics teaches that Truth is the correspondence between the thing and the
intellect. But the Council, as a further consequence of its denial of essences,
is skeptical about this as well: it speaks of a ‘constant reformation’ in the
Church’s expression of the Truth.
d)
The True has Logical Priority over the Good
We have
attempted to expound this objective principle above, as signifying that the
exigencies of objective reality should be our guide of conduct rather than
subjective principles such as love (whether rational love - that is to say the
will - or sense love) and the conscience (understood subjectivistically). The
Council effectively denies the said objective principle and replaces it with
the false principle of antirealist subjectivism. This false principle is seen:
1. most notably in Ecumenism and Indifferentism, where
the primacy of Truth yields to the primacy of some sort of putative ‘Good’ to
be obtained by collaboration with non-Catholic Christians and with members of
other Religions;
2. in the pursuit of such collaborative initiatives not
only by silencing the Truth, but also by denying it, as when the Council claims
that all religions acknowledge the existence of God [12];
that the Church was also to blame for the Protestant revolt [13];
as when the Council insinuates that the Church and Islam stand on equal terms
in regard to past ‘quarrels and dissensions’ [14];
as when the Council claims that it was God Himself Who has established the
Church’s goal as that of the World [15];
3. in conferring Religious Liberty on all men, thereby
granting them the right to prefer to the One True Religion their subjective
free choices independent of Reality [16];
4. in silencing the privileges, rights, and duties of the
Church in regard to the State in favor of some sort of putative peaceful
co-existence between them both [17];
5. in teaching that man’s freedom is a principle higher
than Truth itself [18];
6. in deifying man’s freedom [19];
7. in deifying man, so elevating whatever good there
might be in him above Being Itself;
8. in not teaching that the love of God, which
constitutes the formal, or highest
objective principle of religious life, is the governing principle for the
reformation of such a form of life, but rather putative, merely worldly
‘Goods’;
9. in the principle of ‘inculturation’, where the cult of
the One True God is compromised by its adaptation to pagan, indigenous customs [20];
10. in marriage,
where sense-love is given priority over the objective finality of marriage
inscribed in the natural law and in human nature by God Himself;
11. in the Council’s ‘pastorality’, in other words
in the pre-eminence it accords to praxis over Truth [21];
12. in the Popes’
advocacy of mercy over the ‘condemnation of error’ [22];
13. in suggesting
that the conscience is man’s guide in
his search for the Truth, rather than a faculty intended by God to be informed by the Truth [23];
14. in favoring the
doctrine of sola scriptura with its
advocacy of the interpretation of the Bible by the individual rather than by
the Church.
e)
Being is One
The Council
denies the Unity of Being by introducing the false metaphysical principle of
degree. The Unity of Being is relevant to the Council inasmuch as it
constitutes the foundation both of the Unity of the Faith and of the Unity of
the Church. It does so because the Unity of Being in the final analysis is the
Unity of God Himself, and God is the object of the Faith, with the result that
the Faith is One; likewise the Church is the Mystical Body of Christ, who is
God, with the result that the Church too is One.
We have seen
examples of the false principle of degree in regard to the Faith, in:
1. The concept of putative
‘elements of truth and sanctification’ shared with non-Catholic Christians and
with other religions;
2. The claim that the Church
does not possess the fullness of the Truth on earth;
3. The concept of partial
communion, or communion by degree, of members of other confessions or religions
with the Church.
f)
Being is Immutable
The principle of
flux is manifest in:
1. The changes proposed to the
consecrated life;
2. The changes proposed to
priestly formation;
3. The changes proposed to the
liturgy;
4. The purported advancing
Holiness of the Church;
5. The Council’s very notion of
Truth, both ontological and logical. In this way the principle of flux becomes
the justification for the Council’s entire program of renovation, and indeed
its very raison d’être.
END
OF PART 1 OF 'THE METAPHYSICAL ANALYSIS'
We shall be presenting the 100 metaphysical errors of the Council over the next 2 weeks.
[1] St. Bede refers in the last comment to St.
Gregory. Alongside the other Fathers, they interpret the locusts as
heretics
[2] the first seven of these principles we have already seen in the twenty
propositions concerning Truth (which we now designate more technically as
‘Being’ and) which we have listed in the Introduction; six of these principles
were denied by the six false metaphysical
principles with which we have been analyzing the Council documents; the last
three principles we add here for their relevance to the same documents.
[3] though ‘supernatural’ is of course not a
metaphysical, but a theological, term
[4] ch.2
[5] ch.3
[6] ch.4, A 2
[7] ch.4, A 3&4
[8] ch.4, B
[9] ch.6, A 4
[10] de Lapsis, 28
[11] Introduction
[12] GS 36
[13] ‘both sides were to blame’, UR 3
[14] NA 3
[15] ch.5, A (d)
[16] ch.4, A 3
[17] ch.4, A. 3
[18] ch.4, A. 3 (a); ch.8, C. (a)
[19] cf. ch.4, A 3; ch.8, D on the
deification of man
[20] ch 8, B. 4 (g)
[21] cf. the Historical Sketch
above
[22] ch.9 below, C.2 (b)
[23] Introduction B I a 2
