What would happen if the Holy Father restated some salient items of Catholic dogma?
First of all, I am thinking about this dogma: Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus. This is defined as follows: “We declare, say, define, and pronounce that it is absolutely necessary for the salvation of every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff.” (Pope Boniface VIII, the Bull Unam Sanctam, 1302.) If Pope Francis repeated this, one can only guess at what might happen. At the very least he would utterly destroy 60 years of ecumenical dialogue and cause a massive internal rift within the Catholic Church. He may even have to go into hiding!
Yet it is the Extra Ecclesiam dogma which has been at the heart of the Church’s missionary activity for 2000 years and has been the overriding principle which animated most of the martyrs, some of whom were prepared to die horribly in its defence. Nowadays, very few Catholics would even dream of proposing this ‘outdated’ notion. They would either deny it or qualify it out of existence, which is probably their preferred option. However, to do so does not remove this stumbling block in Church teaching, it merely attempts to bury it in a shallow grave, where it is at risk of springing back up to haunt us. It must resurrect itself in all its glory because it is the one reason for conversion to the Catholic Faith. Otherwise, why bother to be a Catholic at all?
Another shocking reality of recent Vatican teaching is outright condemnation of any attempt to convert someone – to proselytise – by several modern popes. Indeed, Pope Francis himself said that “the Church grows by our witness, in words and deeds—rather than through proselytization.” [Address to Catechists, April 27, 2013]. The few souls who actually do convert often do so for secondary reasons, such as: “my Catholic friends are such nice people” or even: “I was looking for certainties in my life.” St Edmund Campion in his ‘brag’ of 1580 wrote as follows: ‘The Faith is absolutely satisfactory to the mind, enlisting all knowledge and reason in its cause, that it is completely compelling to any who give it an indifferent and quiet audience.’
This is the starting point of any ‘proselytization’ and is an uncomfortable truth. Catholic apologetics is now discarded in favour of the vague recommendations by Pope Francis for ‘witness in words and deeds.’ Underlying traditional Church teaching is the notion that the Catholic Church is universal in time and space, and everyone has to convert to it in order to obtain salvation. You have to be Catholic! Oh dear! How inconvenient! This is impossible to proclaim nowadays without being regarded as a hate criminal, so no wonder the post-conciliar popes have remained silent. How could they possibly speak out?
Turning now to another area of Church teaching: sodomy is a sin crying out to heaven for vengeance. Imagine if the Holy Father restated that? Another hate crime! Worse than going to hiding, he would be locked up and they would throw away the key. So, what do the Church leaders say? Simply this: that homosexuals are acceptable for priestly training so long as they are not ‘active’. But we all know, do we not, that impure thoughts or desires, if lingered over and savoured, are sinful and can eventually lead to sinful activity. In any case, if a man with homosexual tendencies is interviewed by the seminary rector, why on earth would he admit to such tendencies unless he was planning to act on them or had already done so? In order to comply with pro-LGBT legislation, the Church may well end up abolishing the sin of sodomy and I cannot see a way around it, as it is only a matter of time before an active homosexual is refused admission to a seminary, takes legal action and wins his case. This will signal a total collapse of Catholic moral teaching, unless the Catholic hierarchy are prepared to go to jail having spoken up for the truth.
Another dogma of the Church is that Jesus Christ is King. This means that he has dominion not only over our hearts and minds, but also over nations and governments. We are so accustomed nowadays to the separation of Church and state that this essential part of Church teaching is, again, either ignored, sidelined or qualified out of existence. A few years ago, my children and I visited the site of the martyrdom of St Thomas a Becket in Canterbury cathedral. As we whispered a few intercessions to this great defender of the freedom of the Catholic Church from state interference by Henry II, a cathedral canon sidled up to us and announced in solemn tones: “That’s what you get when you combine Church and state!”
Separation of Church and state should be an anathema to the true secular and spiritual order, so again, in common with extra ecclesiam nulla suis and the LGBT problem, the notion of the Kingship of Christ turns around and bites us. Having accepted the separation of Church and state, the state is now having to invent its own morality which is being translated into oppressive laws. The interference by governments in the moral life of their citizens, previously a province of the Church, is now so commonplace that few people even bat an eyelid. The raft of measures which promote LGTB rights are a compelling example of this topsy-turvy intrusion into the Social reign of Jesus Christ by politicians. And to complete this inversion, the post-Vatican II Church is adopting the secular values of governments, such as climate change, social justice and religious freedom. Can we imagine what would happen if the Pope restated the doctrine of the social reign of Jesus Christ? He would be deposed, I expect, and quickly too!
The proclamation of some Catholic doctrines would invite jail sentences of varying lengths, and so parts of Catholic life also become subject to alteration, in order to synchronize with public opinion, which holds that all religions are equally valid. This popular notion also has the Church authorities running scared and is the basis of the current attacks on the Latin Mass. Imagine if they compulsorily reinstated this Mass? That is an impossibility because it would give to the Church a uniqueness and a physical identity totally contrary to the spirit of the modern world. We are now witnessing an attack even on those Catholics who simply ‘like’ the Latin Mass and are prepared to go along with the new orientations. No, they have to crush this Mass, and that is what the Holy Father is hoping to do by lampooning its adherents in his latest book, Hope. This book is the opening salvo, possibly heralding a complete ban on the Latin Mass.
Whilst the Holy Father promotes secular values, he knows that he is secure, as the sedevacantist movement is not a significant threat to him. On the other hand, were he to restate Catholic doctrine in its eternal purity, there is little doubt that his position would be tenuous at the very least, as most of the bishops and Faithful would probably abandon him. The question is: are there any amongst the Catholic hierarchy who are prepared to suffer for the Faith, like St Thomas a Becket, in the face of overwhelmingly hostile governments, which are merely reflecting public opinion? It seems not. We can only hope and pray that God himself sorts this problem out, perhaps by sending us another St Theresa of Avila. From a purely human point of view, this crisis is insoluble, requiring divine intervention which we must ask for on a daily basis by clinging to our rosaries.
Joseph Bevan’s memoirs, Two Families, is available from Os Justi Press and Amazon sites.
