A guest article by Fr. Romano Tommasi.
Cardinal Fernández has been pierced from time to time by my stylus on One Peter Five, as he will be again in a forthcoming study on the history and sources for infinite dignity. To be fair, Fernández was tasked with officially defending what I have considered the theologically and philosophically indefensible “infinite dignity,” whether viewed from loci theologici, or higher principles of any perennial school of philosophy within the Church of the first millennium, just as the Scholastic period of the second.
I underline now that Fernández is not my target. He is a bureaucrat sanitizing his magister, Papa Francesco.[1] My opposition to their work is based upon its feeble, if non-existent, architecture (Fernández represents no school, nor genealogy of approved theology, but a pastoral approach to theology). There is absolutely merit and sanctity in practicing pastoral theology to the exclusion of any higher science, of which the canonization of St. Jean-Marie Vianney provides an exemplar. A hypothetical question, instead, might be whether St. John-Marie Vianney,[2] dubiously literate and knowing Latin but imperfectly, ought to have been considered for Prefect for the Holy Office.
The disaster of Pope St. Peter Celestine in administration stands as the exemplar for caution against equating moral holiness and his strength of faith through trusting the Church’s teachings implicitly as the capacity to reason speculatively, dogmatically, philosophically, and (today) bioethically, to say nothing of the lowest rung of Jacob’s ladder called ecology or ecotheology.
Due to economy of space, I refrain from footnoting a dozen works of Fernández that I consult for my follow up to my first Rorate Caeli article concerning serious doubts that should be harbored by men of good will and all professors of philosophical and sacred sciences concerning Fernández. Even with his host of consultors, he proves unable to look at theology (let alone philosophy) from the forestry tree tops but remains content describing in detail his native Argentinian Espinillo in all its thorny glory.
The practical architecture from Fernández’s earliest scholarly publications surveyed shows,[3] in what must be considered his scientific publications, the following structure:
1. A pastoral question arises (examples: What was the experience of salvation for the Israelite people or what is grace in human daily life?)
2. What do select Bible passages say?
3. What do select Fathers say?
4. What do selections of St. Thomas and St. Bonaventure say?
5. What is the conclusion for pastoral or spiritual action in the community?
I importantly add that Denzinger’s magisterial collection[4] and the Catechism of the Catholic Church is compared to these sources for further insight. In pastoral theology, there is nothing objectionable to this method to ask a practical question and to find some wisdom in venerable and trustworthy texts for a practical answer.
The first item to point out, however, is that I have described Fernández’s best academic persona. When I turned to the presses in South America, Mexico, or Spain where he publishes theology for mass consumption, this humble architecture falls away. St. Thomas and St. Bonaventure disappear as does magisterium. Especially interesting, although Fernández alleges himself influenced by the architect of liberation theology, is absence of Fr. Gustavo Guittierez, OP, in either citations or in bibliographies.
In academic terms, Fernández does not inhabit the intellectual worlds either of Schoolmen, or of the Father of liberation theology. Instead, his intellectual production seeks solutions to problems in today’s Church as follows: (1.) A pastoral difficulty arises, (2.) the issue is described in its concrete details and a story is told by people, (3.) reflection on select Biblical verses ensues, (4.) limited references are made to Fathers or rarely a Schoolman, (5.) a synthesis follows as path to resolve the pastoral question. Again, in a private sphere, for a person in the pew, this method is practicable and not overly complex for daily living.
However, when we turn to Maria Populi Fidelis (7 October 2025; MPF), a magisterial document that looks at the philosophical foundations of, and dogmatic principles for, Mariology, then we see the following structure: (1.) What pastorally ought we to say about Mary,[5] (2.) the biblical story of Mary, (4.) a generalization of select theological traditions, (4.) some general references to Ecumenical Councils on Marian dogmas, (5.) detailed Western European use of Co-redemptrix, all to propose, (6.) a synthesis for today’s Church.
The method in MPF seriously suggests that Fernández is indeed the author of this document, even if he appropriately worked off of consultor studies to generalize about liturgy and other loci theologici. The structural engineering mistakes in this document are massive from their foundations to scaffolding, in each level of the structure built on top of each other.
The most obvious gross error, violating the structural integrity of the house that Fernández built is toward the ceiling, where he dismisses and intentionally fails to discuss “some popes” or rather nearly every pope of the twentieth century, some of whom teach in solemn genres of magisterium. Now, let us compare MPF to Fernández’s earlier and commonly called scientific work, where (in imitation of John Paul II)[6] Fernández commends optimism about “universal salvation” (teologia 1995). There, we note Fernández chronologically discussing magisterial authorities (in Denzinger) from the first and second millennium. Thus, Fernández was never allergic to reading or instrumentalizing diachronic magisterium for adventurous projects. Today, the problem of MPF lies in opposition to the Papa Francesco thesis principally from both pre- and post-Vatican II papal magisterium. Fernández’s engineering solution: Omit papal teaching entirely from the floorplan of any theological synthesis. This new house is of Fernández’s own design.
Now, among the variety of structural problems, some touch the foundations covered by the floors of this house “built on sand” (Matthew 7:26). Foundationally, the DDF has erected itself under Papa Francesco through Fernández, and seconded by Pope Leo, as a philosophical think tank. I have never failed to remind my readers: Fernandez is equivalent to an ancient scholarch, founding his own school of naturalistic ethics. “Infinite dignity” in each human person is a naturally knowable and intrinsic reality in every pagan and Christian. After stating the newly discovered natural truth of the human constitution since the foundation of the world, the later magisterial document MPF cites, among its principal reasons, archêgetês Francis’s newspaper to reject Mary’s capacity to be a Co-redeemer. Fernández argues from the newly privileged and excavated locus ephemeridis (i.e., L’Osservatore Romano):[7] “There is only one Redeemer, and this title cannot be duplicated.” Christ “is the only Redeemer; there are no co-redeemers with Christ.” For “the sacrifice of the Cross, offered in a spirit of love and obedience, presents the most abundant and infinite satisfaction.”
It is appropriate that journalism is explicitly cited as ground for the new theology. Yet, What our scholarch fails to realize is that the infinity of Christ’s merit on the cross is due precisely to his personal and “ontological” infinity, formerly unique to persons of the Trinity in Christianity. The literal infinity of the person of the Word, who is the personality of the one Christ, becomes magisterially no longer unique to the Incarnate Word in time. As Fernández has decreed for the secular philosophical world:
Every human person possesses an infinite dignity, inalienably grounded in his or her very being, which prevails in and beyond every circumstance, state, or situation the person may ever encounter. This principle, which is fully recognizable even by reason alone, underlies the primacy of the human person and the protection of human rights. (Dignitas infinita)[8]
Now that it has been discovered that both Mary of Nazareth and Simon Magus enjoy an ontic infinity, an internal property native to their existence, it is not unthinkable that Mary’s merit (for Francis and Fernández) can also be literally infinite. Fernández himself, in his own infinitude of his person, may even co-redeem humanity through actions in the created order, where everyone enjoys an egalitarian dignity with the God-man. For his part, Jesus merely “would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters” (Romans 8:29). This may be a reductio ad absurdum, but one firmly founded upon the footing of ontologically infinite dignity within every man.[9]
My perusing of the opera Fernandezii show him, as he has claimed, engaging St. Thomas’s and Bonaventure’s texts. However, the above philosophical absurdies are not Scholastic, whether Thomistic or Franciscan; they are no Reduction of the Arts into Theology. Indeed, looking at the real sources behind Fernández’s literary corpus the truth is closer to the following: Reductio omnium artium in Argentinam.[10] Fernández’s architectonic bears a striking resemblance to the pastoral method associated with Lucio Gera and the Argentine School. Whether by direct dependence or by common intellectual atmosphere, the common fruits make the arboreal resemblance difficult to miss.
Perhaps, then, Fernández’s MPF grew from the root of the Schola Argentina, whose merits since 1970 include an attempt to purge Liberation Theology of overt Marxist elements. No longer does the foundation of theorizing begin with classes, but with “the people” (el pueblo). Thus, MPF enjoys its propitious title: “Mary of the faithful Pueblo.” No longer is revolution the goal, but popular piety. This makes perfect sense, too, accounting for why Fernández invokes and praises Father of Liberation Theology, Fr. Guitierrez, but fails to use him as a primary source. Less an architect and more a Clerk of Works, Fernández’s method looks more like a simplified adaption of Fr. Lucio Gera’s La teología argentina del pueblo along with his theological pastoral writings.
Contrariwise, the foundations upon which Mariology is built are the theological places where perennial axioms about Mary’s status can lead to reflection about the nature of Mary’s merit and participation in the redemption. Fernández’s MPF spent no serious time on interpretation of Scripture, especially by consensus of approved Fathers and Schoolmen on the implications of “full of grace” (kecharitômenê), which I recently covered in Rorate Caeli (16 July 2026).
As I implied in the previous article, but now highlight here, MPF (footnote 16) made a colossal blunder in the magisterial document to quote as its own witness and authority the Marian prayer: Sub tuum praesidium, which was adapted as a locus theologicus into the Liturgy in nearly every rite of Christendom, especially in authoritative editions published by the Holy See. The Philosopher-biblicist Fernández’s quasi scientific publications are amusingly in Christian and biblical archeology.
In this light, Fernández goes out of his way to produce a large footnote on the connection between the Marian prayer in Latin: “Underneath your Refuge” and its earlier Greek exemplar. Our Pontifical Keeper of Archaeology failed to notice in his own authoritative exhibit invokes Mary: “Redeem (lytrôsai/libera) us from all dangers,” which in Latin and Greek - like the Latin Our Father’s “Deliver us...” - beseeches Mary for supernatural redemption. Patristic and liturgical tradition in each language consistently employs this verb to address Christ the Redeemer to the exclusion of ordinary saints.
Now, Fernández’s own Marian publications concede in general and definite terms that Mary was subjectively in possession of sanctifying grace the whole of her life, making her every free action accomplished in charity meritorious. Hence, the obvious starting point for a theological architect on Mariology ought to be the solemn decrees on the Immaculate Conception (1854) and Assumption (1950) and their implications for Mary’s possession of grace equal to and even greater than the first Adam and Eve. Ironically, these dogmas were proclaimed to a great degree, as a result of petitions from the pueblo, i.e., theology of the people. The Schola Argentina failed to consult the “populus” in Maria Fidelis Populi.
Cardinal Fernández’s academic essays in journals reveal a theologian who is capable of reading St. Bonaventure with insight and sympathy, and whose pastoral synthesis benefitted from Franciscan intuitions concerning charity, embodiment, and the Christian life. My critique questions neither his sincerity nor pastoral aims there. Instead, I mapped his architecture,[11] where formerly he was accustomed to invokethe diachronic magisterium, represented especially by the tradition edited by Denzinger and Co., into his theological syntheses.
It is precisely this architectonic element that disappears inMPFat the very point where twentieth-century papal teaching bears directly upon the disputed question.This is not merely an omission of citations but the removal of an entire theological locus from the architecture of theological argument (to say nothing of the philosophical destruction of the classical foundation for Christ’s infinite merit). Fernández has shown himself to appreciate Bonaventure, historically, but this by no means leads to him inhabiting the grammar of Bonaventure’s theology. A theologian may accurately cite Bonaventure, even employ some of his conclusions, or admire his spirituality, without constructing any theology according to Bonaventure’s own architectonic principles.
Similarly, Fernández’s theological synthesis for his people proves unaffected by the Seraphic Doctor . Bonaventure would indeed be a welcome architect in any and all future declarations of the DDF. Instead, we likely have but a streamlined method, inspired by the Schola Argentina, with a bit of spackling on its walls from Christian archeology. This presages that any and all future documents to be produced by the head philosopher-theologian of the New Academy will not grow from Bonaventure’s Tree of Life (lignum vitae) but from the undersized prickly Espinillo. These structural reasons explain why Fernández is woefully underqualified for his position and how in each new publication, his method will be susceptible to similar errors toward analogously faulty conclusions.
[1] A curial man can perform that divine alchemy of which St. Alphonsus de Liguori spoke, transforming “lead” of ordinary paperwork into meritorious gold of supernatural action by charity.
[2] If any reader should immediately infer from this example that I am placing St. John Mary Vianney on the same level as Cardinal Fernández, or even preferring the latter to the former, he is following not the argument but his own imagination. Such a reader is respectfully advised to spare both his time and mine and return to the daily news, where such competitions flourish with admirable regularity.
[3] See Victor Manuel Fernández, “Romanos 9-11: gracia y predestinación,” Revista Teología 32, n. 65 (1995) 5-49; “La amistad con Dios y la materia: dimensión corpórea y cósmica de la gracia,” 41, n. 78 (2001) 155-168.
[4] See Heinrich Denzinger, P. Hünermann, et al, Compendium of Creeds, Definitions, and Declarations on Matters of Faith and Morals. 43rd ed. (San Francisco: 2012).
[5] This is signaled clearly in Fernández’s Presentation: “However, there are some Marian reflection groups, publications, new devotions, and even requests for Marian dogmas that do not share the same characteristics as popular devotion.” It is repeated in the Introduction: “The influence she [Mary] currently has on those who have been redeemed.”
[6] Fernández’s article coincides with John Paul II’s controversial framing of Judas’s possible salvation and sympathetic comments made by the pope in his 1995 Crossing the Threshold of Hope that suggest the logic of universalism is worthy of consideration.
[7] For the Newspaper meditation, see MPF, footnote 40.
[8] https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_ddf_doc_20251104_mater-populi-fidelis_en.html#_Toc201667036
[9] I have begun an informal “Infinite Dignity Tracker,” and post regularly on the oddity of Pope Leo’s magisterium now (intentionally?) avoiding the term in official pronouncements and speeches (Perhaps too many respectable philosophers complain to the Holy See?). See https://frromanotommasi.substack.com/publish/posts/detail/206064828?referrer=%2Fpublish%2Fposts%2Fpublished and https://frromanotommasi.substack.com/p/more-missing-infinite-dignity?utm_source=publication-search
[10] A comparison of the structure of Fernández’s architecture.
[11] By “architecture” I do not mean literary arrangement but the hierarchy by which theological authorities are ordered and employed in arriving at doctrinal synthesis.
