Francis as “the synthesis of extreme ultramontane centralization with progressive revolutionary content”: Chessman Replies to Ureta

A Response to José A. Ureta

Stuart Chessman 

February 16, 2022

Society of St. Hugh of Cluny weblog

José A. Ureta responded here on Rorate Caeli to my “Ultramontanism: Its Life and Death.” What follows are my comments on his response.

Modernism, Not Ultramontanism, Is the “Synthesis of All Heresies” — A Response to Stuart Chessman

The following article was submitted to Rorate Caeli by José Antonio Ureta, co-founder of Fundación Roma (Chile) and advisor of its pro-life and pro-family project Acción Familia, a senior researcher at Société Française pour la Défense de la Tradition, Famille et Propriété (Paris), and author of Pope Francis’s Paradigm Shift: Continuity or Rupture in the Mission of the Church? (Spring Grove, PA, 2018). We publish it in the interests of open discussion of topics of grave importance in the Church.

Modernism,  Not Ultramontanism, Is the “Synthesis of All Heresies”

José A. Ureta

Are Canonizations Infallible? — An important new book from Arouca Press

I am pleased to announce the publication of a new book: Are Canonizations Infallible? Revisiting a Disputed Question, from Arouca Press. 

It is a 276-page collection of fifteen essays written by twelve authors: Phillip Campbell, Fr Thomas Crean, Roberto de Mattei, William Matthew Diem, Christopher Ferrara, Msgr. Brunero Gherardini, Fr John Hunwicke, Peter Kwasniewski, John Lamont, Joseph Shaw, Fr. Jean-François Thomas, and José Antonio Ureta. I served as the volume’s editor. The book includes not only sources in English but also translations from French, Italian, and Portuguese. Several of the chapters are published in it for the first time.

All the arguments you’ve ever seen in favor of the infallibility of canonizations or against it—and some you probably haven’t seen—are found in the pages of this book. Authors line up behind both sides. It is a fair and full presentation, which does not shy away from toppling “certainties” that are sometimes mindlessly repeated. The book also serves as an introduction to the history of canonization (including changes made to the process over time) and to the nature and objects of papal infallibility, with Msgr. Gherardini’s mini-treatise especially impressive in that regard. The authors go into what the papal act of canonization means or entails, the conditions it may have for moral certainty on the part of the faithful, and what it concretely demands of members of the Church.