Some Notes on Cardinal Fernández’s Mariology: “Ignorance of Scripture is Ignorance of Christ”[1]
A guest article by a priest who writes under the name Fr. Romano Tommasi.
The current prefect of the formerly known Roman Inquisition (Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith) has publicly highlighted his biblical studies and promoted his reputation as an academic, based upon his asserted thesis work at the Gregorian University.
As we Romans know but do not say in polite conversation, those who wish to forego the discipline of ancient languages and rigorous method at the alternative institution, called the Biblicum, opt for the Gregorian program, knowing the latter to be biblical Studies light. Even so, typically bishops determine this course for their priests, as may be for olden Fr. Fernández.
Whatever the inspiration for Fernández to attend the Gregorian versus the Biblicum, Pontifical Universities still require a diligent man to search out real scholarship, avoiding the mass of mediocrity to ferret out a few truly erudite men who can teach rigorous method, philology, and historical studies, to say nothing of the non-existence of scientific theology in theology faculties (which ought to form the basis for sifting through merely possible and plausible premises over probable and dogmatically certain axioms).[2]
Be that as it may, I risked the venture of purchasing a copy of the Cardinal’s biblical work on Mary: Bajo los ojos de María: Cómo nos mira la Madre (I may need to seek to recuperate my 4.00 USD).
My following comments highlight, then, an academic point about a professional biblicist (among other trades), who has attempted to supply us both magisterial and scholarly knowledge about the Mother of God. As the author of Maria Fidelis Populi, Fernández magisterially critiqued numerous prior popes (from Pope St. Pius X through John Paul II) as “inappropriate” for implying or explicitly naming Mary “Coredemptrix.” Because an inferior can judge his superiors’ magisterium,[3] we think it proper for him to put himself under the knife of peer review, but we don’t expect from him any haute mariologie but merely his species of scientific Mariology, whereby the biblicist does not go beyond Scripture, his wheelhouse.
So, I next translate Fernández’s poorly-stated, contrary-to-fact analysis of the Annunciation:
The announcement of the angel is a motive for joy: “Rejoice” (Luke 1:28). Next an uncommon word appears: “full of grace” (kecharitômenê). This Greek word appear only there, we do not find in any other part of the entire Bible.
Thus, Fernández. Enter Tommasi, the trained philosopher-liturgiologist. As one whose specialty by guild is not intimate knowledge of Holy Writ, I casually come across this in a brief search: “Lo, is not a word better than a gift? but both are with a justified man (kecharitômenô)” (Sirach 18:17).[4] This, in my chain of articles and Substack posts,[5] returns me to a revolving theme: the unseriousness of Church-sponsored academia.
The question is not whether world-class scholars can operate and be successful within Pontifical Universities, they can. The issue at hand is whether the pontifical university system, of which Fernández is indeed a paradigm, produces, as a rule, scientifically disciplined and serious theologians.[6] Fernández especially excites this question, after viewing his Vatican-advertised CV:[7]
• In 1988 he was awarded a licentiate in theology with biblical specialization at the Pontifical Gregorian University of Rome[8]
• In 1990 a doctorate in theology at the faculty of theology of the Pontificia Universidad Católica Argentina.[9]
• Founder and Rector of the Jesús Buen PastorCollege of Science and Sacred Philosophy Teachers.
• He was also Formator and Director of Studies at the seminary of Río Cuarto (1988-1993, 2000-2007),
• He was Dean of the faculty of theology of the Pontificia Universidad Católica Argentinaand then Rector of the same university.
• And the former President of the Argentine Theological Society.[10]
His major biblical error, vitiating his interpretation of Scripture, as someone unaware of the literary and Septuagint (viz., Greek Bible) context of St. Luke (whose borrowings from the Septuagint rank in the ninetieth percentile), is unsurprising. Even at the Biblicum a professional biblicist of the highest pontifical caliber must inconveniently opt for an elective to even know the Septuagint in a one-semester course. Many graduates of the more respectable Biblicum are ignorant of the Septuagint entirely, and many more are well versed in the finer point of ancient Semitic Akkadian.[11] One expects mistakes from all scholars, myself included. What one does not expect from a professional biblicist is the overlooking of a datum so readily discoverable in the Septuagint.
I highlight this, not as an isolated error, but as one data point among far too many, whether in Fernández’s magisterial decrees, his official statements, or—here—in his soi-disant scholarship.[12] The failure to hand on, and the oblivion to which scientific theology according to the method of St. Thomas has been relegated, makes this kind of supercilious theological scholarship now our pontifical norm, not the exception.
The Biblicist-Bonaventurian[13] Pontificating Outside his Guild
Not only has Fernández entered into the world of metaphysics, as philosopher-in-chief of the Pontifical Universities, promoting the new ethics of a rational creature’s intrinsic and constitutional “infinite dignity,” but he has published magisterium as premier Mariologist, though not quite in the image of John Blessed Duns Scotus or of St. Louis de Montfort.
In fact, I have recently highlighted how Fernández is underequipped to address Coredemptrix as essentially taught first in by Pope Leo XIII (Encyclical) and Pope St. Pius X (Encyclical).[14] Afterwards, the term was invoked by a magisterial Holy Office decree (26 June 1913), then Benedict XV (Encyclical; 1918),[15] and a brief of Pius XI and other papal allocutions.[16] After Vatican II, John Paul II used the terminology in several minor magisterial addresses.
Incredibly, Fernández’s DDF’s Maria populi fidelis (on behalf of Pope Leo XIV), otherwise richly footnoted, avoided any magisterial references to Coredemptrix, some of which references I have just listed, and he but vaguely summarized previous magisterium through mentioning “some popes,” as mere obiter dicta (MPF, no. 18). The DDF command now in force states it’s always “inappropriate” to call Mary Coredemptrix. Consequently, magisterially, popes Pius XI-John Paul II were, so to speak, “inappropriate purveyors of terms.”[17] I have mused about what kind of authority, over and above papal, makes Fernández uniquely the, as it were, “ever-appropriate purveyor of terms”? My conclusion: the dead do not speak, only the living. Fernández’s atemporal affirmation reads past popes as forever theologically inappropriate, whether in encyclicals, or otherwise.
A New Forbidden Locus Theologicus: Liturgy and Mary as Coredemptrix
The Roman handbook of indulgences, reformed under Pope Paul VI, commends the faithful to this formerly orthodox prayer (prior to Maria Populi Fidelis):
Ancient Prayer to the Virgin: We turn to you for protection, holy Mother of God, Listen to our prayers and help us in our needs. Save (libera)[18] us from every danger glorious and blessed Virgin (The Liturgy of the Hours, Night Prayer)[19]
The official liturgical books of Rome in Greek and Slavonic, to mention two of the official languages, contain the older version of this prayer (for which reason the handbook of Indulgences calls it ancient). The manuscript tradition reaches back to at least the fourth century, with credible scholars placing the prayer in Egypt as early as the third century. This is propitious since the Church Historian Socrates Scholasticus credits Origen with first applying the term “Theotokos” found in this ancient prayer, too, to the third century, which reads:
Under your mercy do we find refuge, o Theotokos, do not look askance at our temptation, but redeem (lytrôsai) us from all dangers, o uniquely chaste, o uniquely blessed woman.[20]
Looking at the best search engines of the Greek Old Testament and the New Testament,[21] one easily notices that (other than the transactional or commercial idea of “buying back” an object) the purely religious activity of prayer or supernatural redemption is exclusively the action of God on behalf of Israel and the Church. Therefore, this gravid term, as used in the Divine Liturgy and Liturgy of the Hours, is “inappropriate” since its inception from the third or fourth centuries (according to the framework of the biblicist Fernández), making the worship of the Church itself inappropriate and in need of purification from whatever sort of error “inappropriateness” may be.
Behold, we see the poverty of numerous periti or experts and consultors (whose counsels we do not know without reading their exact recommendations to the DDF). However, assuming the DDF to be transparent, all the Philosopher-in-Chief’s experts proved unaware of the fact that the entire Eastern Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions are impugned by the rejection of Mary’s redemptive role, which is explicitly enshrined (without the prefix “Co-” [syn-] in Greek).
Naturally, a systematic biblical theology can solve this problem without too much effort. Thus, in Colossians 1:24, Paul as an agent says “I fulfill” whatever is lacking in the sufferings of Christ. Paul acts personally “on behalf” or “for the sake” of the Church meritoriously. What is more, through his own agency, in 1 Corinthians 9:22, he says: “I became all things, in order—in all events—that I save some...”[22] St. Paul’s role cannot be superior to Mary’s (she being “full of grace” from her conception)[23] so that his merits and their efficacy are for some, but not all. Mary, through her merits, cooperates in a superior manner, so that all are redeemed through her limited meritorious moral cooperation with infinite merit in the redemption by her son.
As such, “redeem us” is rightly begged of Mary in the locus theologicus of the liturgy in a strong and yet correct manner in Greek. It is, contrary to Fernández and Co., the Medieval Schoolmen who more greatly attenuated the stronger accent of ancient theology, lacking the distinction of “Co-redemptrix” to underline her subordinate and limited role. Unlike Fernández’s intrinsic infinite dignity of every man under the sun,[24] Mary’s dignity was only intrinsically finite, and merely putatively “infinite” (according to St. Thomas) in virtue of her divine Motherhood.[25]
Such elementary theologizing as this is sufficient to obviate all difficulties—and raises, once again, the question of the competence of the man sitting in the chair of the quondam Holy Office.
NOTES
[1] See St. Jerome’s Prologus in Commentariorum in Isaiam.
[2] By ‘scientific theology’ I do not mean Thomistic conclusions as such, but the disciplined theological method by which authorities are ranked, probabilities distinguished from certainties, and conclusions demonstrated according to the classical understanding of sacra doctrina.
[3] 1983 Code of Canon Law: “The first see is judged by no one” (Canon 1404).
[4] Lexica and the search engine show that this term was a hapax legomenon in Greek literature from Homer to Sirach. The second usage extant in so-called working instruments for scientific study ranks as St. Luke and thereafter the Protevangelium of James and Origen and then becomes a normative term. The effort required for this search can be measured in minutes, not hours. The claim of Fernández wrongly believes this participle to be unique. In fact, it is reducible to Sirach (due to other indications in Luke 1 of Greek vocabulary in Sirach). Secondly, Fernández cannot hope to understand the terms meaning in the New Testament without reference to Ephesians 1:6 (echaritôsan), where the verb at the root of the participle is used by St. Paul, which is considered uniquely the only other usage of a related word using the same root theologically in the New Testament.
[5] For example, Cardinal Müller, one of the most celebrated academics among the cardinalate, managed to introduce two major scholarly errors into a three-minute intervention at the Consistory in his attempt to challenge the Society of St. Pius X. See https://frromanotommasi.substack.com/publish/posts/detail/205963825?referrer=%2Fpublish%2Fposts%2Fpublished
[6] Fernández claims to be entirely Thomistically formed, but claims to know Scholasticism of Bonaventure too. I can find no evidence of Scholastic method or Thomistic method, so far, in the works which I have consulted. See https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2023/09/14/doctrine-victor-manuel-fernandez-interview-246077/
[7] https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/documentation/cardinali_biografie/cardinali_bio_fernandez_vm.html
[8] I am unable to find a copy of his thesis in the available Gregorian archives online, nor its title among the many works of his more recently at the Gregorian. I can find no publication that mentions its title or subject matter. In 1995 I find only a turgid study interpreting Roman 9-11 in the Argentinian journal Teología.
[9] Again, I can find many publications attributed to Fernández, but strangely not his supposed doctoral dissertation on St. Bonaventure, who likewise appears prominently in the prolix study on Romans 9-11 (as it is entitled) in Teología (65) 1995.
[10] chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/bollettino/pubblico/2023/07/01/230701a.pdf
[11] The curriculum has developed priorities that permit mastery of highly specialized ancient Near Eastern philology while leaving a biblical scholar undertrained in the Greek Bible that saturates Luke
[12] After highlighting these pressure points, I await the thaumaturgic appearance of the full titles of his tesina and doctorate in university archives. We hope important rules are followed: all commission members are historically verifiable but necessarily deceased, the references within the work predate the year of publication, and the language and theories reflect in each the Roman and Buenos Airean Sitz in leben. Essential details take time to assemble before texts are ready for public consumption.
[13] Fernández’s doctoral dissertation is on the unrelated to Biblicism on the doctor of the Church St. Bonaventure of Bagnoregio.
[14] See Iucunda Semper Expectatione and Ad diem Illum.
[15] Inter Sodalicia
[16] 30 November 1933; 23 March 1934.
[17] This leads one to wonder about how many improprieties popes in their magisterium have been collectively and individually guilty of?
[18] Similar to the Greek below, one will be hard pressed to find an invocation in the Vulgate, as prayer, that is not directed to God only. Furthermore, it’s imperative in the singular is uniquely directed to him by Jesus in the our Father. While early Latin Fathers used a different edition of the Bible (generically considered under the title Latina Vetus), the same difficulty persists in this Latin prayer as in the Greek below.
[19] The Handbook of Indulgences: Authorized English Version (New York: 1991), 83.
[20] https://www.homeofthemother.org/en/magazine/selected-articles/spiritual-life/9692-the-oldest-prayer-to-our-lady
[21] E.g., https://www.stepbible.org/?q=version=ESV@version=Byz@version=LXX@strong=G3084&options=VGNUH&display=INTERLEAVED
[22] I will not enter into the the theological differences between saving and redeeming in the Old and New Testaments here.
[23] This point is conceded by Fernández in Bajo los ojos de María...
[24] The new ethic of infinite dignity per se wreaks havoc on the doctrine of merit, in need of a full future discussion.
[25] Summa Theologiae, part I, question 25, article 6, response to objection 4: “quandam dignitatem infinitam.”
