A Criticism of Pope Francis’ Interviews~by Fr. Marc Vernoy, SSPX
A criticism of Pope Francis’ interviews
October 09, 2013
District of the US
A criticism of Pope Francis’ interviews
October 09, 2013
District of the US
A studious critique of the various interview comments made by Pope Francis demonstrates that concerning the Faith, how he is specifically promoting the ambiguities and errors of the Council.
This critique of Pope Francis recent interview comments is courtesy of Fr. Marc Vernoy, SSPX prior of St. Thomas More Priory in Sanford, Florida. To avoid repetition, the footnote references have been cited only once.
“For the letter kills, but the spirit vivifies.”
Could this scriptural quote (from II Cor. 3:6) be Pope Francis' true motto?
Keep in mind that “talking with Pope Francis is a kind of volcanic flow of ideas that are bound up with each other.[1]” We notice that he often refers to the Ignatian Discernment of Spirits, but in his own way. The latest interviews, in speaking from the heart and unveiling details on himself, show him taking risks as Roman Pontiff.
“Who is Jorge Mario Bergoglio?” “I am a sinner”[1], he answers… “I am a bit cunning,[4] a manoeuvrer,[4] but it is also true that I am a bit naïve.”[1] He is, for sure, a genuine Jesuit, former provincial of his order in Argentina during the terrible political turmoil of 1973-1979 that moreover makes a man very prudent, even cunning and apparently ingenuous. The recently published La lista de Bergoglio attests to this.
He also admits that he does “not know Rome[4].[1]” We hope that this will change and that he will accordingly love Rome.
After he has been in charge of the Holy Catholic Church for more than half a year, it is easier to understand the thought of Pope Francis. Due to many of his statements, even if we see a genuine movement in his way of focusing on our Lord Jesus Christ and His Gospel as the Good News, we may feel real causes of concern.
Masters
In his declarations, we seem to find running through the papal thought a kind of idée fixe, which focuses on the Pauline teaching developed by St. Augustine regarding the gift of life and the fight against what may kill it. “St. Paul,” says the Pope, “is the one who laid down the cornerstones of our religion and our creed. You cannot be a conscious Christian without St. Paul… Then there are Augustine, Benedict and Thomas and Ignatius,” who was “especially a mystic.” And “naturally Francis.[3]”
His model is Fr. Peter Faber, the Reformed Priest co-founder of the Jesuits. The Pope likes his gentleness and simplicity, his proximity to the poor and those on the margin of society, his availability and qualities of discernment and judgment.[1]
“His two preferred contemporary thinkers are Henri de Lubac and Michel de Certeau.[1]” Henri de Lubac, a founder of the New Theology, opened a theological battlefield and created a great confusion with his works on the natural and the supernatural. Moreover, he rejected the necessary ecclesial logical link, the continuity between the present beliefs and the explicit faith of the first centuries.
Would the word of the Apostle to the Corinthians: “For the letter kills, but the spirit vivifies,” help us to discern the web of his mind?
Spiritual Pelagianism
Pelagianism is a heresy which denies the consequence of original sin and professes that human beings do not need Divine grace in order to do good; the natural would of itself have access to the supernatural, and our Lord merely sets a good example of virtue.
Pelagianism is apparently the first target of Pope Francis. Nevertheless, what he calls Pelagianism and condemns is more a spiritual attitude than the theological heresy.
The spiritual expression of Pelagianism, according to Francis, would be to find a kind of external security in the Catholic life by certain practices, laws and rituals, but without any optimism in human nature… The Pope continues:
This basically appears as a form of restorationism. In dealing with the Church’s problems, a purely disciplinary solution is sought, through the restoration of outdated manners and forms which, even on the cultural level, are no longer meaningful. (...) Basically it is static, although it is capable of inversion, in a process of regression. It seeks to “recover” the lost past.[2]
Let us try to understand his indictment via the condemnation of St. Paul; “For the letter kills, but the spirit vivifies” is the key thought used by St. Augustine against Pelagius. St. Thomas quotes St. Augustine:
Hence Augustine says that “as the law of deeds was written on tables of stone, so is the law of faith inscribed on the hearts of the faithful” and “what else are the Divine laws written by God Himself on our hearts, but the very presence of His Holy Ghost?”(…) By saying that, the letter denotes any writing external to man, even that of the moral precepts such as are contained in the Gospel. Wherefore the letter, even of the Gospel would kill, unless there were the inward presence of the healing grace of faith. (I, q. 106, art. 1-2).
Accordingly, we cannot throw out the letter, as it is the support of the spirit, just as the body is the support of the spirit. Without the body, there is no spirit. The letter is the servant, the instrument of the spirit; it is good and necessary in as much as it leads toward the spirit.
Our Lord condemned spiritual Pelagianism in St. Matthew (5:17 & 20):
Do not think that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets. I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill (…) For I tell you, that unless your justice abound more than that of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.
If the law teaches man externally without the Gift of the Spirit and does not inwardly transform him, it kills the spiritual life.
There is a similarity between pelagianism and pharisaism. As pelagianism attributes all success to the only human ability, so pharisaism attributes success to the practice of exterior religious actions.
Spiritual Pelagianism is an obstacle to the life and Sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ and to His Gospel. The letter alone kills indeed, as long as it remains an extrinsic word, a literalism. With the Pope we agree that Spiritual Pelagianismkills by its overconfidence in some external precepts and practices.
For sure, contemporary Pharisees or spiritual Pelagians are nailing Our Lord on the Cross when they limit or even twist His teaching to a mere panoply of doctrinal, moral, ritual or social precepts, a code of orders and threats of chastisements, but also those who are spiritually presumptuous about human nature. Without the gifts of faith and grace, shall we add, we can do nothing good in charity.
The letter and the spirit according to Francis
Media hostile to the Catholic truth and obsessed by sexual morals focus much on a caricatured Catholic letter regarding these questions. They rejoice in insisting on a few quick statements about this peculiar point.
However, speaking too much about them is a danger if faith does not come first in one’s teaching. We must recognize that sometimes official statements do not stress enough the necessity of a Redeemer and faith when broaching these subjects.
Yet, what about those bishops who do not effectively protect life and the family from divorce, abortion, contraception, the contraceptive mentality andhomosexualism?
Francis points out his idea of the pastoral attitude to conversion of souls:
The proclamation of the saving love of God comes before moral and religious imperatives. Today sometimes it seems that the opposite order is prevailing.[1]
The Church sometimes has locked itself up in small things, in small-minded rules. The most important thing is the first proclamation: Jesus Christ has saved you. And the ministers of the church must be ministers of mercy above all.[1]
When I perceive negative behavior in ministers of the church or in consecrated men or women, the first thing that comes to mind is: ‘Here’s an unfruitful bachelor’ or ‘Here’s a spinster.’ They are neither fathers nor mothers, in the sense that they have not been able to give spiritual life.[1]
Besides his few unjust assertions about the Church, Francis is willing to speak as a true father who must give life, but many Evangelicals have the same kind of language, which is often very superficial and emotional.
According to Francis, Vatican II saved the Church from the deadly letter not only in morals, but in many other fields, especially the liturgy. The Council:
was a re-reading of the Gospel in light of contemporary culture, Vatican II produced a renewal movement that simply comes from the same Gospel. Its fruits are enormous. Just recall the liturgy. The work of liturgical reform has been a service to the people as a re-reading of the Gospel from a concrete historical situation. Yes, there are hermeneutics of continuity and discontinuity, but one thing is clear: the dynamic of reading the Gospel, actualizing its message for today ─ which was typical of Vatican II ─ is absolutely irreversible. Then there are particular issues, like the liturgy according to the Vetus Ordo. I think the decision of Pope Benedict [his decision of July 7, 2007, to allow a wider use of the Tridentine Mass] was prudent and motivated by the desire to help people who have this sensitivity. What is worrying, though, is the risk of the ideologization of the Vetus Ordo, its exploitation.[1]
If by warning against the letter and ‘too-human rules’ being presented as the means of salvation the Holy Father is intending to condemn Pelagianism and its Naturalism, we must be grateful. But
Naturalism does not seem to be the real enemy.
The real target is the restorationist, who is presented as an ideologue who “hardens the present in the past”, instead of following Vatican II and “fitting the eternal into the present.” He intends to freeze the life of the Church in the past with the exploitation of a “Vetus Ordo,” a ‘has-been’ liturgy.
Obviously, for Francis discontinuity is not a problem and continuity should not be an obligation. The Pope quotes the Commonitorium of St. Vincent of Lerins: “Even the dogma of the Christian religion must follow these laws, consolidating over the years, developing over time, deepening with age.”[1] He insists on evolution, as if Faith were autonomous, but avoids completely the key words of this Commonitorium on Tradition: “That faith which has been believed everywhere, always, by all.”
And Pope Francis is insistent with “those who today,” according to him:
always look for disciplinarian solutions, those who long for an exaggerated doctrinal ‘security,’ those who stubbornly try to recover a past that no longer exists; they have a static and inward-directed view of things. In this way, faith becomes an ideology among other ideologies. I have a dogmatic certainty: God is in every person’s life.[1]
Afterwards the Pope applies this immanent “dogma,” which may be valid for the spiritual journey of an individual, to the universal Church. Behind this “dogma” follows another ‘dogma’: the modern autonomy of conscience according to which the Church must evolve without much care for any normative guidance of the Word of God and the faithful Tradition of the Church. The only norm is the people of God, the living face of the Church.
All the faithful, considered as a whole, are infallible in matters of belief, and the people display this infallibilitas in credendo, this infallibility in believing, through a supernatural sense of the faith of all the people walking together.[1]
The Pope also speaks about theologians, but has no word regarding the Teaching Church and her infallibilitas in docendo, her necessary guidance of the faithful by the Magisterium.
Danger of an idée fixe
Inspired by this motto “For the letter kills, but the spirit vivifies,” the Pope gives an impression of exhaling a salvific breath, but also of great confusion. His lack of balance regarding the ‘letter’ and his muddled concept of ‘spirit’ have tremendous consequences.
Is not Francis setting an unbalanced opposition between the letter and the spirit, faith and grace, charity and natural good, liturgy and Gospel, asceticism and mysticism, conscience guided by faith and autonomous conscience, condemnation of error and preaching of the Gospel, form and content?
And to avoid demands for clarification, or to answer embarrassing objections, the spirit seems to be the universal answer. “The mystical dimension (of discernment), he explains, never defines its edges and does not complete the thought.”[1]
For the Pope, the letter really kills:
About Faith: the Pope says that “ours is not a ‘lab faith,’ but a ‘journey faith,’ a historical faith. God has revealed himself as history, not as a compendium of abstract truths.[1]” “If a person says that he met God with total certainty and is not touched by a margin of uncertainty, then this is not good.” “Uncertainty, the Pope continues, is in every true discernment that is open to finding confirmation in spiritual consolation.[1]”
We need some clarification, as Francis seems to confuse the certitude of Faith and Hope for grace. St. Thomas on the contrary is enlightening: “Yet man does not know for certain thereby that he has grace; but he does know that the faith, which he has received, is true.” (III q.30, art. 1)
About Charity: On May 22, Francis apparently preached that ‘Atheists can do good.’ “The disciples were a little intolerant,” closed off by the idea of possessing the truth, convinced that “those who do not have the truth cannot do good.”
These mixed-up expressions require, at the least, some distinction between supernatural good and natural good. In its Canon 5, the Council of Carthage declares indeed that “without the grace of God we can do no good thing.”
October 09, 2013
District of the US
A studious critique of the various interview comments made by Pope Francis demonstrates that concerning the Faith, how he is specifically promoting the ambiguities and errors of the Council.
This critique of Pope Francis recent interview comments is courtesy of Fr. Marc Vernoy, SSPX prior of St. Thomas More Priory in Sanford, Florida. To avoid repetition, the footnote references have been cited only once.
“For the letter kills, but the spirit vivifies.”
Could this scriptural quote (from II Cor. 3:6) be Pope Francis' true motto?
Keep in mind that “talking with Pope Francis is a kind of volcanic flow of ideas that are bound up with each other.[1]” We notice that he often refers to the Ignatian Discernment of Spirits, but in his own way. The latest interviews, in speaking from the heart and unveiling details on himself, show him taking risks as Roman Pontiff.
“Who is Jorge Mario Bergoglio?” “I am a sinner”[1], he answers… “I am a bit cunning,[4] a manoeuvrer,[4] but it is also true that I am a bit naïve.”[1] He is, for sure, a genuine Jesuit, former provincial of his order in Argentina during the terrible political turmoil of 1973-1979 that moreover makes a man very prudent, even cunning and apparently ingenuous. The recently published La lista de Bergoglio attests to this.
He also admits that he does “not know Rome[4].[1]” We hope that this will change and that he will accordingly love Rome.
After he has been in charge of the Holy Catholic Church for more than half a year, it is easier to understand the thought of Pope Francis. Due to many of his statements, even if we see a genuine movement in his way of focusing on our Lord Jesus Christ and His Gospel as the Good News, we may feel real causes of concern.
Masters
In his declarations, we seem to find running through the papal thought a kind of idée fixe, which focuses on the Pauline teaching developed by St. Augustine regarding the gift of life and the fight against what may kill it. “St. Paul,” says the Pope, “is the one who laid down the cornerstones of our religion and our creed. You cannot be a conscious Christian without St. Paul… Then there are Augustine, Benedict and Thomas and Ignatius,” who was “especially a mystic.” And “naturally Francis.[3]”
His model is Fr. Peter Faber, the Reformed Priest co-founder of the Jesuits. The Pope likes his gentleness and simplicity, his proximity to the poor and those on the margin of society, his availability and qualities of discernment and judgment.[1]
“His two preferred contemporary thinkers are Henri de Lubac and Michel de Certeau.[1]” Henri de Lubac, a founder of the New Theology, opened a theological battlefield and created a great confusion with his works on the natural and the supernatural. Moreover, he rejected the necessary ecclesial logical link, the continuity between the present beliefs and the explicit faith of the first centuries.
Would the word of the Apostle to the Corinthians: “For the letter kills, but the spirit vivifies,” help us to discern the web of his mind?
Spiritual Pelagianism
Pelagianism is a heresy which denies the consequence of original sin and professes that human beings do not need Divine grace in order to do good; the natural would of itself have access to the supernatural, and our Lord merely sets a good example of virtue.
Pelagianism is apparently the first target of Pope Francis. Nevertheless, what he calls Pelagianism and condemns is more a spiritual attitude than the theological heresy.
The spiritual expression of Pelagianism, according to Francis, would be to find a kind of external security in the Catholic life by certain practices, laws and rituals, but without any optimism in human nature… The Pope continues:
This basically appears as a form of restorationism. In dealing with the Church’s problems, a purely disciplinary solution is sought, through the restoration of outdated manners and forms which, even on the cultural level, are no longer meaningful. (...) Basically it is static, although it is capable of inversion, in a process of regression. It seeks to “recover” the lost past.[2]
Let us try to understand his indictment via the condemnation of St. Paul; “For the letter kills, but the spirit vivifies” is the key thought used by St. Augustine against Pelagius. St. Thomas quotes St. Augustine:
Hence Augustine says that “as the law of deeds was written on tables of stone, so is the law of faith inscribed on the hearts of the faithful” and “what else are the Divine laws written by God Himself on our hearts, but the very presence of His Holy Ghost?”(…) By saying that, the letter denotes any writing external to man, even that of the moral precepts such as are contained in the Gospel. Wherefore the letter, even of the Gospel would kill, unless there were the inward presence of the healing grace of faith. (I, q. 106, art. 1-2).
Accordingly, we cannot throw out the letter, as it is the support of the spirit, just as the body is the support of the spirit. Without the body, there is no spirit. The letter is the servant, the instrument of the spirit; it is good and necessary in as much as it leads toward the spirit.
Our Lord condemned spiritual Pelagianism in St. Matthew (5:17 & 20):
Do not think that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets. I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill (…) For I tell you, that unless your justice abound more than that of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.
If the law teaches man externally without the Gift of the Spirit and does not inwardly transform him, it kills the spiritual life.
There is a similarity between pelagianism and pharisaism. As pelagianism attributes all success to the only human ability, so pharisaism attributes success to the practice of exterior religious actions.
Spiritual Pelagianism is an obstacle to the life and Sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ and to His Gospel. The letter alone kills indeed, as long as it remains an extrinsic word, a literalism. With the Pope we agree that Spiritual Pelagianismkills by its overconfidence in some external precepts and practices.
For sure, contemporary Pharisees or spiritual Pelagians are nailing Our Lord on the Cross when they limit or even twist His teaching to a mere panoply of doctrinal, moral, ritual or social precepts, a code of orders and threats of chastisements, but also those who are spiritually presumptuous about human nature. Without the gifts of faith and grace, shall we add, we can do nothing good in charity.
The letter and the spirit according to Francis
Media hostile to the Catholic truth and obsessed by sexual morals focus much on a caricatured Catholic letter regarding these questions. They rejoice in insisting on a few quick statements about this peculiar point.
However, speaking too much about them is a danger if faith does not come first in one’s teaching. We must recognize that sometimes official statements do not stress enough the necessity of a Redeemer and faith when broaching these subjects.
Yet, what about those bishops who do not effectively protect life and the family from divorce, abortion, contraception, the contraceptive mentality andhomosexualism?
Francis points out his idea of the pastoral attitude to conversion of souls:
The proclamation of the saving love of God comes before moral and religious imperatives. Today sometimes it seems that the opposite order is prevailing.[1]
The Church sometimes has locked itself up in small things, in small-minded rules. The most important thing is the first proclamation: Jesus Christ has saved you. And the ministers of the church must be ministers of mercy above all.[1]
When I perceive negative behavior in ministers of the church or in consecrated men or women, the first thing that comes to mind is: ‘Here’s an unfruitful bachelor’ or ‘Here’s a spinster.’ They are neither fathers nor mothers, in the sense that they have not been able to give spiritual life.[1]
Besides his few unjust assertions about the Church, Francis is willing to speak as a true father who must give life, but many Evangelicals have the same kind of language, which is often very superficial and emotional.
According to Francis, Vatican II saved the Church from the deadly letter not only in morals, but in many other fields, especially the liturgy. The Council:
was a re-reading of the Gospel in light of contemporary culture, Vatican II produced a renewal movement that simply comes from the same Gospel. Its fruits are enormous. Just recall the liturgy. The work of liturgical reform has been a service to the people as a re-reading of the Gospel from a concrete historical situation. Yes, there are hermeneutics of continuity and discontinuity, but one thing is clear: the dynamic of reading the Gospel, actualizing its message for today ─ which was typical of Vatican II ─ is absolutely irreversible. Then there are particular issues, like the liturgy according to the Vetus Ordo. I think the decision of Pope Benedict [his decision of July 7, 2007, to allow a wider use of the Tridentine Mass] was prudent and motivated by the desire to help people who have this sensitivity. What is worrying, though, is the risk of the ideologization of the Vetus Ordo, its exploitation.[1]
If by warning against the letter and ‘too-human rules’ being presented as the means of salvation the Holy Father is intending to condemn Pelagianism and its Naturalism, we must be grateful. But
Naturalism does not seem to be the real enemy.
The real target is the restorationist, who is presented as an ideologue who “hardens the present in the past”, instead of following Vatican II and “fitting the eternal into the present.” He intends to freeze the life of the Church in the past with the exploitation of a “Vetus Ordo,” a ‘has-been’ liturgy.
Obviously, for Francis discontinuity is not a problem and continuity should not be an obligation. The Pope quotes the Commonitorium of St. Vincent of Lerins: “Even the dogma of the Christian religion must follow these laws, consolidating over the years, developing over time, deepening with age.”[1] He insists on evolution, as if Faith were autonomous, but avoids completely the key words of this Commonitorium on Tradition: “That faith which has been believed everywhere, always, by all.”
And Pope Francis is insistent with “those who today,” according to him:
always look for disciplinarian solutions, those who long for an exaggerated doctrinal ‘security,’ those who stubbornly try to recover a past that no longer exists; they have a static and inward-directed view of things. In this way, faith becomes an ideology among other ideologies. I have a dogmatic certainty: God is in every person’s life.[1]
Afterwards the Pope applies this immanent “dogma,” which may be valid for the spiritual journey of an individual, to the universal Church. Behind this “dogma” follows another ‘dogma’: the modern autonomy of conscience according to which the Church must evolve without much care for any normative guidance of the Word of God and the faithful Tradition of the Church. The only norm is the people of God, the living face of the Church.
All the faithful, considered as a whole, are infallible in matters of belief, and the people display this infallibilitas in credendo, this infallibility in believing, through a supernatural sense of the faith of all the people walking together.[1]
The Pope also speaks about theologians, but has no word regarding the Teaching Church and her infallibilitas in docendo, her necessary guidance of the faithful by the Magisterium.
Danger of an idée fixe
Inspired by this motto “For the letter kills, but the spirit vivifies,” the Pope gives an impression of exhaling a salvific breath, but also of great confusion. His lack of balance regarding the ‘letter’ and his muddled concept of ‘spirit’ have tremendous consequences.
Is not Francis setting an unbalanced opposition between the letter and the spirit, faith and grace, charity and natural good, liturgy and Gospel, asceticism and mysticism, conscience guided by faith and autonomous conscience, condemnation of error and preaching of the Gospel, form and content?
And to avoid demands for clarification, or to answer embarrassing objections, the spirit seems to be the universal answer. “The mystical dimension (of discernment), he explains, never defines its edges and does not complete the thought.”[1]
For the Pope, the letter really kills:
About Faith: the Pope says that “ours is not a ‘lab faith,’ but a ‘journey faith,’ a historical faith. God has revealed himself as history, not as a compendium of abstract truths.[1]” “If a person says that he met God with total certainty and is not touched by a margin of uncertainty, then this is not good.” “Uncertainty, the Pope continues, is in every true discernment that is open to finding confirmation in spiritual consolation.[1]”
We need some clarification, as Francis seems to confuse the certitude of Faith and Hope for grace. St. Thomas on the contrary is enlightening: “Yet man does not know for certain thereby that he has grace; but he does know that the faith, which he has received, is true.” (III q.30, art. 1)
About Charity: On May 22, Francis apparently preached that ‘Atheists can do good.’ “The disciples were a little intolerant,” closed off by the idea of possessing the truth, convinced that “those who do not have the truth cannot do good.”
These mixed-up expressions require, at the least, some distinction between supernatural good and natural good. In its Canon 5, the Council of Carthage declares indeed that “without the grace of God we can do no good thing.”
About liturgy: Francis rejoices in the liturgical changes of Vatican II with its “dynamic of reading the Gospel, actualizing its message for today.”[1]
Nevertheless, liturgy is first of all a rite, following the Tradition of the Church and giving with certitude the sacramental life promised in the Gospel and the fruits of the Sacrifice of our Lord. However, without some respect for rites, there is no more liturgy, but mereProtestantism. Unfortunately, it is a fact that the new liturgy doesn’t always assure validity of the sacraments.
About asceticism: Pelagius was a naturalist ascetic, but all the idealized figures that the Pope loves must be mystical only. “I love the mystics,”[3] declares Francis.
Would it be possible to understand the mystical Ignatius without an ascetic impulse first? A removal of the ascetic life from the Church would certainly be a catastrophe. What about the calls of our times for Penance? What about our Lady at La Salette, Lourdes and Fatima?Would it be possible to find any mysticism without some ascetic experience? All Catholics are called to the mystical life, the life of the seven Gifts of the Spirit, leading to the Beatitudes, but this requires that they depart from sin and amend their lives through the Blood of the Redeemer.
About transcendence: Pope Francis says that “the conscience is autonomous and everyone must obey his conscience.”[4] “Each of us has a vision of good and of evil. We have to encourage people to move towards what they think is good.”[4]
How is it possible to reconcile a promotion of this ‘autonomy’ and the necessity to guide our conscience with the Gospel and the grace of Our Lord? We have here a manifest discontinuity with traditional teaching. The Pope has indeed a very peculiar way of using theDiscernment of Spirits of St. Ignatius. He speaks constantly about it, but his ‘discernment’ does not appear as really being guided by any transcendence or objective Faith, but more by a personal faith or an immanent movement, without any assurance of being supernatural. Accordingly, the pope considers “Proselytism is solemn nonsense, it makes no sense… Our goal is not to proselytize but to listen to needs, desires and disappointments, despair, hope.”[4]
About rejecting error: The Holy Father, moved by the example of John XXIII, wants a Church preferring “the balm of mercy to the arm of severity.” “She believes that present needs are best served by explaining more fully the purport of her doctrines, rather than by publishing condemnations.” (Opening Address to the Council, October 11, 1962).
But the children of God need the protection of the Church, as a mother. A true mother educates her children in showing the Truth and the Good and encouraging them in this way, but also in condemning lies and evil and punishing them, according to the necessary letter of the law.
The conciliar ditty is back, in a ‘mature Church’: no more children, but adults only…
The Pelagian temptation
Pelagianism is an excessive confidence in nature because of its ability. As a consequence, it tends to a naturalist optimism. In his letter of June 18, 1961 to the Central Preparatory Commission for the Council Archbishop Lefebvrestated that “Fr. de Lubac was close to Pelagianism and had some divergences with the Holy Office.”
Unfortunately, we notice such a Pelagian temptation in the speeches of the Pope, who himself claims to be a disciple of de Lubac. He develops a kind of theological optimism in human nature that leads to many forms of Naturalism.
Should we forget that the letter that comes from God and His beloved Spouse the Holy Catholic Church is introducing us to the mystery of grace, or should we give all our confidence to a ‘spirit,’ which is that of the autonomous conscience?
Is it right to oppose our own conscience to the Word, immanence to transcendence, preaching of the Gospel to sacramental liturgy, mysticism to asceticism, or to confuse the natural and the supernatural?
It seems also that for Francis, as for Pelagius, our Lord Jesus Christ is more an example than the Redeemer.
And I believe in God, not in a Catholic God, states the Pope, there is no Catholic God, there is God and I believe in Jesus Christ, his incarnation. Jesus is my teacher and my pastor, but God, the Father, Abba, is the light and the Creator.
A revolution in the government
As appears in the following quotation, little room will be left for any opposition: “The first thing I decided was to appoint a group of eight cardinals to be my advisers. Not courtiers but wise people who share my own feelings.”[3]
“Vatican II,” says Francis, “inspired by Pope Paul VI and John, decided to look to the future with a modern spirit and to be open to modern culture. The Council Fathers knew that being open to modern culture meant religious ecumenism and dialogue with non-believers. But afterwards very little was done in that direction. I have the humility and ambition to want to do something.”[4]
Thus, the many contradictions we find between the thought of the Roman Pontiff and reality, between a ‘fantasy church’ and the real Church are the greatest obstacles to acting efficiently. He never mentions any crisis of the Faith, but tries to give a very optimistic image of the contemporary Conciliar Church.
With John XXIII he shares modernoptimism, which is quite close to the optimism of Pelagius. As a matter of fact, it is an impediment for implementing any effective policies.
Francis explains about his predecessor that he “saw all things, the maximum dimension, but he chose to correct a few, the minimum dimension. You can have large projects and implement them by means of a few of the smallest things.” Nonetheless, while John XXIII did change a few things, he introduced a disastrous revolution in the Church.
Pope Francis is willing to be a prophet communicating via humble symbols, as symbols pass on thoughts that words could limit. Is mysticism going to be his program of governing the Church and adapting the Church to the modern world? “This is the beginning of a Church,” the Pope declares, “with an organization that is not just top-down but also horizontal.”[4]
Francis appears to be willing to govern mainly against restorationism, against the ‘has-been’ order and especially what he seems to despise in the liturgical field: the Vetus Ordo.[1]
Reality of Tradition
The lack of equilibrium, fruit of an idée fixe, leads the Pope to some hard judgments.
For sure, spiritual Pelagianism may be a temptation in our ranks. Some obsessions with ritual or useless concerns may harm spiritual life.
But are we, traditionalists, the only ones at risk? Do we really merit this renewed scapegoating, when most of the bishops regard the letter of Vatican II as an idol?
Our families and our vocations are the fruits of an authentic and balanced spiritual life centered on the life and sacrifice of Our Lord Jesus Christ that is received in the sacraments and flourishes in our daily Christian duties.
Liturgy and prayer are the ordinary means to share Divine Life, and this life grows as long as we live according to the Catholic mysticism of the Sacrifice of the Mass and the Gospel.
Archbishop Lefebvre always made very clear to his priests that the law should not limit our spiritual life and our missionary work. He adapted and secured the life of his priests to the reality of modern life and to the confusion of our times. The Statutes of the SSPX and its generous Regulations are a patent proof of this view, full of Catholic mysticism, but a stranger to any restorationism or spiritual Pelagianism.
As a matter of fact, we never find any sign of it in the thought and works of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. Two quotes from the Statutes will exemplify this:
The Society will willingly come to the assistance of aged, infirm and even unfaithful priests. (De sodalitii operibus)
In the performance of apostolic works, they [SSPX members] will strive to be docile instruments of the Holy Ghost, in order to transmit eternal life to souls. (De sodalium virtutibus)
Let us mention also as a proof of putting the spirit above the letter, the SSPX’s recourse to supplied jurisdiction!
Our founder centered his preaching on the Incarnation and the Sacrifice of Our Lord Jesus Christ and was always careful to give moral advice as a consequence of our Faith. He clearly preferred to follow St. Thomas Aquinas in preaching morals via the virtues of Our Lord Jesus Christ than via the Ten Commandments. “These rules are meant to form within seminarians the virtues necessary for the priesthood rather than to be a strict code of life at the seminary,” wrote Archbishop Lefebvre as a conclusion of the seminary rule. (Statutes, Rule for the Seminaries, Ch. 4)
To accuse traditionalists of being pelagian or restorationists would be unjust and grotesque.
Conclusion
Let us first thank the Pope for prodding us to make a deep and humble examination of conscience.
But what appears with the latest Papal declarations is that the Spirit of Vatican II is back, the hippie mindset is back with its ‘peace and love’ and pseudo-mysticism. Is it this kind of ‘has-been spirit’ that St. Paul glorifies?
Francis apparently proposes a very optimistic view of human nature. But instead of being reached by means of a pelagian asceticism, this optimism is enforced by an ‘unbridled mysticism,’ immanent in man’s ‘fundamentally good nature.’ Only the modern autonomous conscience visiting a fantasy mystic world could give birth to this peculiar sort of Neopelagianism.
Despite beautiful passages of real spiritual and pastoral interest, the declarations of Francis seem to try to revive something that we thought to be a dying ‘has-been,’ the Spirit of Vatican II. And this spirit kills the necessary and salvific letter of the Good News.
Footnotes
1 Interview of September 30, 2013.
2 To CELAM, July 28, 2013.
3 La Repubblica, October 1, 2013.
4 English translation of the author.
source sspx.org
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