A Chink in the Armor: An Appendix to A Crisis of Meaning

As I noted in an earlier post, I cut a lot of material from my first draft of the article published yesterday at OnePeterFive on the role of Sacred Scripture in the rise of Modernism. In the list of papal actions provided in Part II, the last item mentioned was Pope Pius XII's Divino Afflante Spiritu. Here's the part that explains how this document represents a turning point in the battle of the Popes against Modernism:

A Chink in the Armor:

Biblical Inerrancy and Divino Afflante Spiritu

That all 73 books included in the canon of Sacred Scripture are entirely free from error is the perennial teaching of the Catholic Church, having been universally proclaimed since the Age of the Fathers.^[1] Pope Leo XIII restated this teaching, underscoring its infallibility as part of the Universal Magisterium, in his 1893 encyclical Providentissimus Deus as follows:

For all the books which the Church receives as sacred and canonical are written wholly and entirely, with all their parts, at the dictation of the Holy Ghost; and so far is it from being possible that any error can co-exist with inspiration, that inspiration not only is essentially incompatible with error, but excludes and rejects it as absolutely and necessarily as it is impossible that God Himself, the supreme Truth, can utter that which is not true. This is the ancient and unchanging faith of the Church, solemnly defined in the Councils of Florence and of Trent, and finally confirmed and more expressly formulated by the Council of the Vatican.^[2]

Commenting on this and related passages in Providentissimus Deus, Pope Benedict XV noted with grief in his encyclical Spiritus Paraclitus that, despite Leo XIII’s clear and emphatic instruction, attacks against the doctrine of biblical inerrancy were being launched from within the Church itself:

But although these words of Our predecessor leave no room for doubt or dispute, it grieves Us to find that not only men outside, but even children of the Catholic Church – nay, what is a peculiar sorrow to Us, even clerics and professors of sacred learning – who in their own conceit either openly repudiate or at least attack in secret the Church’s teaching on this point. We warmly commend, of course, those who, with the assistance of critical methods, seek to discover new ways of explaining the difficulties in Holy Scripture, whether for their own guidance or to help others. But We remind them that they will only come to miserable grief if they neglect Our predecessor’s injunctions and overstep the limits set by the Fathers. Yet no one can pretend that certain recent writers really adhere to these limitations. For while conceding that inspiration extends to every phrase – and, indeed, to every single word of Scripture – yet, by endeavoring to distinguish between what they style the primary or religious and the secondary or profane element in the Bible, they claim that the effect of inspiration – namely, absolute truth and immunity from error – are to be restricted to that primary or religious element. Their notion is that only what concerns religion is intended and taught by God in Scripture, and that all the rest – things concerning “profane knowledge,” the garments in which Divine truth is presented – God merely permits, and even leaves to the individual author’s greater or less knowledge. Small wonder, then, that in their view a considerable number of things occur in the Bible touching physical science, history and the like, which cannot be reconciled with modern progress in science!^[3]

As the above passage makes clear, Benedict XV was well acquainted with the Modernist plan to weaken the doctrine of biblical inerrancy by the introduction of a distinction between matter pertaining to faith and morals on the one hand and matter pertaining to the historical record and physical science on the other. It was a distinction called for by the Modernists of the late 19th century, such as Charles A. Briggs, A. Leslie Lilley and Alfred Loisy^[4]– the last of whom was excommunicated by Pope St. Pius X (†1914) in 1908. Despite Benedict XV’s explicit rejection of this plan – the point-by-point refutation extends over several lengthy paragraphs^[5] – the distinction upon which it turned nonetheless found explicit mention and, as the Modernists would later interpret it, implicit approval in Pius XII’s Divino Afflante Spiritu (1943):

Hence this special authority – or, as they say, authenticity – of the Vulgate was not affirmed by the Council [of Trent] particularly for critical reasons, but rather because of its legitimate use in the Churches throughout so many centuries; by which use indeed the same is shown, in the sense in which the Church has understood and understands it, to be free from any error whatsoever in matters of faith and morals [emphasis added].^[6]

The limiting effect of the final clause – presumably appended by Augustin Cardinal Bea,^[7] who, together with Jacques-Marie Voste, O.P., was largely responsible for the drafting of the encyclical – is as obvious as it is potentially devastating: if the inerrancy of the Latin Vulgate – i.e., the canonically approved normative edition of Sacred Scripture – is to be described as obtaining “in matters of faith and morals,” the question naturally arises as to whether it is equally free from error in matters not pertaining to faith and morals, e.g. those pertaining to the historical record and the natural world – a notion the very suggestion of which could only represent a tremendous victory for the Modernists.

It is certainly possible to argue that, as the passage in question is dealing with the critical estimation of the Latin Vulgate as one among many editions of Sacred Scripture, the phrase “in matters of faith and morals” does not intend to limit in any way the inerrancy of Holy Writ as regards its substance; rather, it merely intends to acknowledge that the received edition of the Vulgate – like all texts which have been passed down through countless generations – can be improved in regards to its form by careful critical evaluation – for example, through comparison with older or newly discovered manuscripts. This is doubtless the manner in which Pius XII understood and promulgated it, for he goes on to say that the exegete must undertake his interpretation of God’s word “in full accord with the doctrine of the Church, in particular with the traditional teaching regarding the inerrancy of Sacred Scripture, and which will, at the same time, satisfy the indubitable conclusion of profane sciences.”^[8]

Nonetheless, the wording and placement of the phrase could not have been more opportune for the enemies of the traditional teaching on plenary inerrancy. It signaled a way around the dogma which did not require denying it outright. A chink in the armor which had been carefully crafted by every Pope since Gregory XVI to defend the inerrancy of Sacred Scripture had been found, and the Modernists knew exactly how to exploit it during the deliberations of the Second Vatican Council.

The original schema of the planned Dogmatic Constitution treating Divine Revelation, which was drawn up by the Preparatory Theological Commission in 1960 and presented to the Central Preparatory Commission for approval the following year, summarized the authentic magisterial teaching on biblical inerrancy as follows:

Because Divine Inspiration extends to everything, the absolute immunity of all Holy Scripture from error follows directly and necessarily. For we are taught by the ancient and constant faith of the Church that it is utterly forbidden to grant that the sacred author Himself has erred, since Divine Inspiration of itself necessarily excludes and repels any error in any matter, religious or profane, as it is necessary to say that God, the supreme Truth, is never the author of any error whatever.^[9]

Three things are noteworthy in regard to this passage: (1) the perennial doctrine of plenary inerrancy was clearly and emphatically presented as such; (2) the phrase “in any matter, religious or profane,” an allusion to and rejection of the distinction proposed by the Modernists, was included; (3) the last phrase, i.e. “of any error whatever,” is actually drawn from Divino Afflante Spiritu – as indicated in footnote 7 of chapter 2 – but without the caveat “in matters of faith and morals.” It would appear that the members of the Preparatory Theological Commission, headed by the notoriously conservative Alfredo Cardinal Ottaviani, preferred to treat the dubious phrase as charitably as possible – by ignoring it completely.

When the schema was presented for deliberation by the Council Fathers in 1962, a fierce conflict broke out. Spearheaded by Franz Cardinal König of Vienna, who spoke on behalf of the Germanic contingent, a number of progressive prelates came forward to express their reservations regarding the traditional teaching on biblical inerrancy. Cardinal König himself was so brazen as to flatly assert that Sacred Scripture contains numerous positive errors pertaining to history and natural science, and that the Constitution must, as a result, limit the application of the doctrine of biblical inerrancy to matters of faith and morals alone.^[10] More than 180 Council Fathers – a small but nonetheless significant minority – stood firmly against any caveat being added to the text which could be seen as limiting the scope of the teaching in the way proposed by Cardinal König. When the assembly eventually split into irreconcilable factions over this and similar matters, Pope John XXIII personally intervened by ordering a new schema be drafted under the joint supervision of Cardinal Ottoviani and Cardinal Bea. The document would go through a total of 5 major revisions – the third of which saw the participation of a young Fr. Joseph Ratzinger – before being passed in the Fourth Session by a vote of 2,344 to 6. The final version of the paragraph treating biblical inerrancy reads as follows:

Therefore, since everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit, it follows that the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of our salvation [emphasis added]. Therefore “all Scripture is divinely inspired and has its use for teaching the truth and refuting error, for reformation of manners and discipline in right living, so that the man who belongs to God may be efficient and equipped for good work of every kind.”^[11]

As the final vote indicates, nearly all of those Council Fathers who initially objected to König’s proposal allowed themselves to be convinced that this phrasing was sufficiently amenable to an orthodox interpretation; the appending of 2 Timothy 3:16-17 to the paragraph apparently allayed all fears that “that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of our salvation” was, in reality, nothing more than a different way of saying “in matters of faith and morals.” As for the more than 2,100 Council Fathers who didn’t object to Cardinal König’s proposal, it seems they were either unconcerned with or even approving of the possibility of the magisterial teaching on biblical inerrancy being effectively eviscerated in favor of a position previously condemned as heretical.^[12]

In any case, the fact that a high-ranking prelate could stand in assembly with his brother bishops and speak out against an infallible teaching of the Magisterium, and have the overwhelming majority either agree with him or, at least, do nothing to contradict him, is a sobering indication of the breadth of the apostasy in the 1960's, and it confirms the suspicion that the dubious phrase contained in Divino Afflante Spiritu – 20 years before the opening of Vatican II – was not simply an example of poor wording, but was rather placed there as a signal to all who held with Modernism that the tide was turning in their favor. The long wait which began with Gregory XVI and Pius IX was nearing its end; soon, they could let fall the masks of obedience and piety and work openly to realize that dream of the Enlighteners which, as Leo Cardinal Suenens would later observe, really amounted to “the French Revolution in the Church:” Vatican II.

---

Footnotes:

[1] St. Gregory of Nazianz: “We who extend the accuracy of the Spirit to every letter and serif will never admit, for it would be impious to do so, that even the smallest matters were recorded in a careless and hasty manner by those who wrote them down.” Orations, 2:105. Cf. St. Clement of Rome, First Letter to the Corinthians, 45:1-3; St. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 2:28:2.

[2] Pope Leo XIII, Providentissimus Deus, §20. Cf. Council of Trent, Fourth Session (1546), Decree Concerning the Canonical Scriptures; First Vatican Council, Third Session (1870), Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith Dei Filius, §13.

[3] Benedict XV, Spiritus Paraclitus, §§18-19.

[4] Cf. Briggs, Charles A. (1909). “Modernism Mediating the Coming Catholicism,“ in The North American Review, Vol. 189, pp. 879-880; Lilley, A. Leslie (1908). The Programme of Modernism, pp. 15-87; Loisy, Alfred (1912). The Gospel and the Church, pp. 23-52.

[5] Cf. Spiritus Paraclitus. §§17-25.

[6] Pius XII, Divino Afflante Spiritu, §21.

[7] Augustin Bea (1881-1968) was a German Jesuit biblical scholar who served as the first president of the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity. He also served as personal confessor to Pope Pius XII. He was the grand architect of modern ecumenism, and the driving force behind Nostra Aetate.

[8] Divino Afflante Spiritu, §46.

[9] Schema Constitutionis Dogmaticae de Fontibus Revelationis (1961), §12. Joseph A. Komonchak (Trans.)

[10] Cf. Grillmeier, Alois Cardinal (1989). "The Divine Inspiration and the Interpretation of Sacred Scripture," in Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, Vol. 3, pp. 205-206. Also: Zia, Mark Joseph (2006). „The Inerrancy of Scripture and the Second Vatican Council,“ in Faith & Reason, pp. 175-192.

[11] Second Vatican Council, Fourth Session (1965), Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation Dei Verbum, §11.

[12] The clear parallel to the 2014-2015 Synod on the Family should be obvious to all.

Welcome to the War

If you've been paying attention to coverage of the Catholic Church lately, you might have noticed a spike in the appearance of terminology borrowed from the bellicose arts, with words like "conflict," "battle" and even "war" being used to describe the goings-on in and around the Vatican these days. While such talk is pretty standard fare for faithful Catholic publications, it has recently spread beyond the narrow borders of Catholic blogdom and entered the mainstream of polite society: Tess Livingstone of The Australian, Tim Stanley of The Telegraph, Ross Douthat of The New York Times and now Damian Thompson of The Spectator have all come to the same conclusion: we are on the brink of civil war.

Just more media spin? A bit of hyperbole to increase revenue? Some would like you to think so. Cardinal Donald Wuerl recently appeared on World Over Live with Raymond Arroyo in part to assure viewers that there exists "no division on the core teachings of the faith" among the bishops. We are, I suppose, to ignore voices such as that of Polish Archbishop Henryk Hoser, who recently stated that "some bishops [...] do not even accept the official teachings of the Church." And if we don't ignore them - if we reject the "Sunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows" narrative - and instead view events within the framework of a "politically partisan narrative," then we deserve to be silenced, as Ross Douthat found out after his commentary provoked the ire of a gaggle of progressive Catholic intellectuals and university professors.

That is, if it weren't for the fact that such talk of war is not limited to the authors of newspaper editorials. Just yesterday, Cardinal Maradiaga informed reporters that Pope Francis is "prepared to battle" his own Curia in order to push through his desired reforms. And in this morning's homily, the Pope himself trained his sights yet again upon the "Doctors of the Law" and fired off a characteristically veiled yet effective warning shot:

God has included us all in salvation! All! This is the beginning. We with our weaknesses, with our sins, with our envy, jealousies, we all have this attitude of excluding which - as I said - can end in wars.

While I congratulate Douthat, Thompson and the rest for refusing to go along with the official narrative and calling it like it is, I have to ask: Where the hell have you guys been for the last 50 years?

For the record: civil war is already upon us. Anyone paying attention knows that the walls have been scaled, the gates have been breached, and the enemy has set up camp in our own court. All that's left is the castle keep, surrounded on all sides by men brandishing torches. And now you think we are on the brink of civil war? Tell that to the three generations of Catholics who have been fighting tooth and nail to preserve every scrap of Sacred Tradition they can get their hands on from the corruption of the grand Aggiornamento. Tell that to those who were reduced to tears as sanctuaries were being desecrated, statues removed, altars broken, and communion rails torn out. Tell that to the scores of good men who were turned away from the priesthood because they objected to the rampant homosexualism of the seminaries. Tell that to the faithful who were cast out of the Church for having the gall to demand that she remain loyal to Christ's teachings 30 years ago.

The only thing new about the 2015 Synod was the brazenness with which the heretics and apostates pushed their revolutionary agenda. They're not even trying to prop up a 'Hermeneutic of Continuity' anymore. It's a rupture, a break - in other words, a schism - from Catholic Tradition. They know it, we know it, and it's time you guys start reporting on it.

Welcome to the war. It's about time you showed up.

(For my Spanish readers: Ahora en Español)

Tres Cardinales Contra Haereticos

How many Cardinals does it take to condemn a heresy?

If I had been gifted with more wit by Almighty God, I'd be able to turn that into one heck of a joke. I'm sure there's at least a mediocre one in there somewhere.

As many of you know by now, Cardinal Walter Brandmüller, President Emeritus of the Pontifical Commission for Historical Sciences, has gone on record in condemnation of any proposal to change Catholic teaching on marriage as heresy. As reported on LifeSiteNews yesterday, when asked whether the Church can change its teaching on marriage without falling into grave error, the good Cardinal replied:

It is evident that the pastoral practice of the Church cannot stand in opposition to the binding doctrine nor simply ignore it. In the same manner, an architect could perhaps build a most beautiful bridge. However, if he does not pay attention to the laws of structural engineering, he risks the collapse of his construction. In the same manner, every pastoral practice has to follow the Word of God if it does not want to fail. A change of the teaching, of the dogma, is unthinkable. Who nevertheless consciously does it, or insistently demands it, is a heretic – even if he wears the Roman Purple.

Cardinal Brandmüller thus becomes the third high-ranking prelate to condemn the Kasper proposal and its attendant errors as heresy. The first to use the H-word in relation to the aftermath of the 2014 Synod was Cardinal Gerhard Müller, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, who quipped back in December of 2014:

Any separation of the theory and the practice of the faith would, in its formulation, represent a subtle christological heresy.

As I noted at the time, one can't help but be reminded of the comments made by Cardinal Donald Wuerl on the second day of the 2014 Synod in which he suggested precisely such a separation of theory from practice.

The second prelate to drop the H-bomb was Cardinal Robert Sarah, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, back in February of this year:

The idea that would consist in placing the Magisterium in a nice box by detaching it from pastoral practice - which could evolve according to the circumstances, fads, and passions - is a form of heresy, a dangerous schizophrenic pathology. I affirm solemnly that the Church of Africa will firmly oppose every rebellion against the teaching of Christ and the Magisterium.

The case seemed clear to me when I wrote the admittedly sophomoric but nonetheless uncontested article "Is Cardinal Kasper Promoting Heresy?" at the conclusion of the 2014 Synod. Now that there are three high-profile Cardinals who have come forward to condemn the heresy, I feel justified in maintaining my original conclusion.

But what is to come of these condemnations? If the position may be safely rejected as heresy, is condemnation of its promoters as heretics to follow? Cardinal Brandmüller's explicit mention of "the Roman Purple" is as far as anyone has gone in the natural progression from condemnation of the proposal to condemnation of the one who proposed it. If Cardinal Kasper remains adamant in the face of such condemnation, must we wait for the judgment of the Pope - a judgment which may never materialize - before we draw the necessary conclusion? And what would that conclusion entail? I'm no canon lawyer, but it seems to me that the canons of Trent (Session 13, Canon 11) explicitly call for the excommunication of anyone who "shall presume to teach, preach, or obstinately to assert, or even in public disputation to defend" the thesis that one who is in a state of unrepentant mortal sin may receive Holy Communion. Does the fact that Pope Francis, in his address to the Synod Fathers wherein he admonished them "Let no one say 'this cannot be said'," appeared to have had precisely this canonical censure in mind, nullify the incurment of the penalty? And who is competent to decide?

In any event, I have the feeling that momentum is building. If I were a betting man, I'd wager that Cardinal Carlo Caffarra will be the next to publicly confirm the heretical nature of the Kasper proposal, well in advance of the 2015 Synod. If he does, I foresee a chain-reaction which will be well-nigh impossible for anyone - perhaps including even Pope Francis - to stop.

Henry VIII and the Break with Rome

Seventh in a Series on the Protestant Reformation

by

Fr. Charles Coppens, S.J.

Henry VIII of England

England had been an integral portion of the Catholic Church since A.D. 596, at which date St. Austin, with his forty monks, arrived there on a mission from Pope Gregory the Great, and soon converted a large portion of the inhabitants. During the nine centuries that had since elapsed, piety had flourished in the land to such an extent that the country was fondly called by its people "the Dowry of Mary;" whereby they wished to signify that they were more devoted than most other nations to the Blessed Virgin Mary, who is so near and dear to her Divine Son. All the cities and towns contained substantial churches, many of them costly and beautiful, and from all of them rose one concordant voice of worship; from every pulpit the same doctrine was taught; and few persons there were in whose mind and heart religion did not hold an honored place.

Monasteries dotted the land, more than twenty to a county, homes of prayer, of learning and labor, from whose portals streams of charity and consolation ever poured forth to all the needy and afflicted of the neighborhood. And England was happy, happy in the blessings of time and of eternity; it was "merry England" then, but it is so no more. The Kingdom was powerful and prosperous, having a full treasury, an industrious, intelligent and contented people, at the time when our story begins, namely in 1509, when Henry VIII, then a most promising youth of eighteen years, succeeded his father, Henry VII, whose many good qualities had been somewhat dimmed by his well-known avarice.

The new King soon became the idol of his people. High ran the universal joy, when, but two months after his ascension to the throne, he was solemnly united in the holy bonds of matrimony to the virtuous princess Catherine, a daughter of Ferdinand, King of Castile and Aragon.

With this affectionate wife, he lived seventeen years, during which she bore him three sons and two daughters; but all these died in their infancy, except the princess Mary, who was afterwards Queen of England. In his public life he was generally reputed to be a model ruler, a model man and a model Christian. He had entered the lists as a foremost champion of the Catholic faith, by publishing a book in defense of the Seven Sacraments against the attacks of Luther, and he had obtained from Pope Leo X, in reward of his zeal, the title of "Defender of the Faith," which he was to wear till death, but which the Kings of England have unjustly retained to the present day. But in his private life, Henry wanted one important virtue; he was all along very unfaithful to his stainless spouse. When he was thirty-five years of age, Queen Catherine being then forty-three, he allowed himself to become infatuated with a young lady of twenty-two, the coquettish Anne Boleyn, and he put no check on his criminal passion. Of course, he could not marry her during the life-time of his lawful wife. It was secretly suggested to him by some flatterers that, with his powerful influence at Rome, he might perhaps obtain a separation from her, on the plea that she had formerly been married to his elder brother Arthur. But the latter had died when a mere boy of fourteen, and the marriage had never been consummated. Besides, whatever impediment existed had been removed by a formal dispensation of the Church before Henry's marriage.

However, in 1527 the King undertook to plead that this dispensation was invalid, that therefore Queen Catherine was not his lawful wife, and that his delicate conscience did not allow him to live with her. How hypocritical was this pretense is shown to evidence by many facts; in particular by his conduct during the epidemic called "the sweating sickness," which then visited England, and soon entered the royal palace. While he saw the danger of death before him, he became very pious, he confessed his sins every day, and received Holy Communion once a week; and during this season of piety he resumed his marital relations with the Queen until the plague was gone. Then he banished Catherine, recalled Anne Boleyn, and urged the suit for the divorce with renewed energy. But the Supreme Pontiff, Clement VII, thought at the time in extraordinary need of Henry's help against powerful enemies, remained firm during the five years that the divorce suit lasted, and finally refused any further litigation in the matter.

In that situation of affairs, an unprincipled courtier, Thomas Cromwell, made a wicked suggestion to the King, advising him to throw off the yoke of Rome, and to declare himself the head of the Church within his own realm; he could then appoint his own ecclesiastical court to dissolve the marriage; many princes in Germany had thus made themselves independent in spiritual things, and they had reaped a rich harvest in appointing to themselves the lands and buildings of the churches and monasteries.

The King was delighted with this counsel. He at once made Cromwell a member of his privy council, and followed his advice in all its details. For three years, he had secretly been living in adulterous union with Anne Boleyn, when, in 1533, her condition of pregnancy made it imperative that some decisive step should be taken to prevent public disgrace. Therefore, he married her privately on January 25, but it was given out that the ceremony had taken place on Nov. 24, 1532, because the child was born on September 7, less than eight months after the real nuptials. This child of sin was Elizabeth, who in course of time did probably more harm to England than anyone else has ever done, for she was the principal cause of establishing Protestantism in that land.

To bring about the divorce from Catherine, Henry appointed Thomas Cranmer to the Archbishopric of Canterbury, and made him the judge of the case, though the Pope had explicitly reserved the decision to himself. The servile court at last pronounced the sentence of divorce. Carnmer was well chosen for this disgraceful task, for he had himself, after ordination, secretly married a daughter of the Protestant leader, Osiander. Yet this is the infamous man who later on introduced the doctrine of the Reformers into England, and who composed the Book of Common Prayer.

On May 28, 1533, he solemnly declared that the King had been lawfully married to Anne Boleyn, and that he now confirmed the marriage by his pastoral and judicial authority, which he derived from the successors of the Apostles. And yet only four years later, May 28, 1537, this same man again openly and solemnly pronounced "in the name of Christ and for the honor of God," that this same marriage was an always had been null and void. For Henry had become suspicious of his new wife, he had consigned her to the tower and condemned her to death for adultery, and she was beheaded on the day after her divorce.

The Many Wives of Henry VIII

Only five months after this, on October 12, his third wife, Jane Seymour, brought forth his son, whe became later King Edward VI; the mother died in childbirth. His fourth wife was Anne of Cleves, but he soon divorced her, too, and he punished Cromwell with death for having promoted that marriage. He next espoused Catherine Howard, but her also he soon divorced, accusing her of adultery committed before her marriage, and he had her beheaded for constructive treason, as her supposed sin was called. His sixth wife, Catherine Parr, barely escaped the like fate for having presumed to differ from him on a religious question; but when the officers arrived to convey her to the tower, she had appeased his wrath by a most humble apology.

And yet this monstrous tyrant and scandalous adulterer is supposed by many simply folk to have been the chosen instrument of Providence for separating the English Church from dependence on the one pastor of the one fold. When a Pope is bad, he is an exception in his line; but with "Reformers," badness is the rule, and Christ assures us that the tree is known by its fruit.

When Cromwell had advised separation from Rome, in 1532, Henry had immediately accomplished the design. For he at once summoned a convocation of the clergy, and required of it a recognition of his supreme headship of the Church of England. The act was passed, with the clause added, "as far as the law of Christ will allow." By this clause, the terrified clergy tried to save their conscience; but it was ignored by the tyrant. At once, he appointed the layman Cromwell to be spiritual vicar-general of the realm, and thus he set him over all the bishops. Their powers were suspended, and each of them had to sue for faculties from the King to enable him to govern his flock. Bishops and parliament trembled before the tyrant, and became mere tools of his will. At his bidding, parliament passed bills for divorcing and beheading the Queens, for settling the succession to the throne as pleased him, for condemning anyone to death.

To resist his will was to court death, to court death requires a hero, and few courtiers of politicians are heroes. The lord-chancellor, Blessed Thomas More, and Blessed Cardinal Fisher, bishop of Rochester, boldly refused to take the oath of Henry's spiritual supremacy. They were cast into the Tower and beheaded for the faith. So were many religious and seculars, men and women. The religious houses were confiscated, first the smaller ones; these were charged with relaxation, but the larger ones were declared to be above reproach. Yet, soon after, the larger ones also were suppressed, and their land and treasure usurped to enrich the King and his flatterers, while the poor people who used to be supported by their charity were left to starve of want, and later on were branded with a red hot iron for begging their bread, or given over as slaves to whoever convicted them of vagrancy. It is hard to trace the finger of God in Henry's work, but it is easy to see in it the influence of the Devil, the world and the flesh.

Vital Immanence Revisited

We've been here before....

Regular readers of this blog will recall an article published here some days ago entitled Change We Can Believe In? In it, I provided a very brief account of the historical origins of Pentecostalism, the general condemnation of the notion of a 'New Pentecost' issued by Pope Leo XIII in 1897, and the gradual acceptance of that same movement by modern Catholics in the wake of the Second Vatican Council. Either by mutual enrichment or by chance, the matter of this New Pentecostalism was subsequently treated by fellow blogger S. Armaticus over at Deus Ex Machina in an article which ended with the following observation:

The fascination that Bergoglio and the neo-modernists have with evangelical Pentecostalism is likely grounded in the fact that, since their neo-modernist theology is a purely negative thesis, with no attractive force of its own, and the adaptation of this negative theology is causing the death of their ecclesiastical structure, they are attracted to the evangelical Pentecostalism due to its "positive" i.e. "attractivistic contents". [...] These Pentecostal ideas are not correct, but at least they say something substantial. Or, in the worst case scenario, Pentecostalism says something more substantial than neo-modernism.

That paragraph stuck in my mind, as it echoed something I remembered having read somewhere before, but I couldn't quite put my finger on the source. Regular readers will have picked up by now that this kind of thing happens to me quite often.

A few days later, blogger Stefan Schwarz directed my attention to a video of a presentation given by Fr. Paul Scalia entitled The Errors of Modernism. At about the 17 minute mark, I remembered whence the original observation regarding the negative and positive content of Modernism came - Pope St. Pius X's encyclical Pascendi:

However, this Agnosticism is only the negative part of the system of the Modernist: the positive side of it consists in what they call Vital Immanence.

Suddenly, everything I had been suspecting regarding the role of the "New Pentecost" and its most avid proponents fell into place: I was staring into the new face of Vital Immanence.

It was, of course, Pope St. Pius X who alerted the Catholic world to the heretical doctrine of Vital Immanence and its central role in Modernist thought. Many definitions of this doctrine have been formulated over last century following the publication of Pascendi, but that proposed by Salusbury F. Davenport is perhaps the most relevant to the heresy's present manifestation:

[Vital Immanence] is the wholly psychological process of the human consciousness unfolding itself, which has not the remotest likeness to the presence of a transcendent reality abiding within us. God as transcendent is lost to sight; no room is left for any kind of revelation; God is the permanent possibility of progress, He is ever projected as the ideal in advance of each successive stage of evolution and changes as the advance proceeds. (Immanence and Incarnation, p. 68)

Replace "God" with "Holy Spirit," and we have before us the (logically) positive element of the New Pentecost viewed objectively: the Holy Spirit is the agent of change and reform. As Fr. Peter Knott, S.J., a proponent of the "Holy Spirit, God of Surprises" theology, remarked in his book, The Keys to the Council:

Authentic reform and renewal will always be a response to the promptings of the Spirit in ever-changing historical and cultural contexts.

Unsurprisingly, one of Pope Francis' favorite homiletic themes is that of the Holy Spirit as the Divine agent of change:

• The Holy Spirit upsets us because it moves us, it makes us walk, it pushes the Church forward. [...] The Spirit pushes us to take a more evangelical path, but we resist this. [...] Submit to the Holy Spirit, which comes from within us and makes go forward along the path of holiness. (16.04.2013)
• This is the temptation to go backwards, because we are 'safer' going back: but total security is in the Holy Spirit that brings you forward, which gives us this trust - as Paul says - which is more demanding because Jesus tells us: "Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law." It is more demanding! (06.12.2013)
• The Holy Spirit is the living presence of God in the Church. He keeps the Church going, keeps the Church moving forward. More and more, beyond the limits, onwards. The Holy Spirit with His gifts guides the Church. You cannot understand the Church of Jesus without this Paraclete, whom the Lord sends us for this very reason. And He makes unthinkable choices, but unimaginable! To use a word of St. John XXIII: it is the Holy Spirit that updates the Church: Really, he really updates it and keeps it going. And we Christians must ask the Lord for the grace of docility to the Holy Spirit. Docility in this Spirit, who speaks to us in our heart, who speaks to us in all of life's circumstances, who speaks to us in the Church's life, in Christian communities, who is always speaking to us. (12.05.2014)

Subjectively viewed, however, the positive element of Vital Immanence - the New Pentecost - is a personal experience of the Divine, hinted at by Pope Francis above in his description of the Holy Spirit as that "which comes from within us." Fr. Paul Scalia describes it as follows:

Religion, for the Modernist, is nothing more than a manifestation of this presence of the Divine to each person. It is radically individualistic. It is the presence of the Divine in each one of us which stirs up and makes some sentiment felt. This is what Cardinal Newman calls a "sentiment" and a "taste." Vital Immanence makes religion - in the words of Fr. John Hardon - "a kind of motion of the heart, hidden and unconscious, [...] a natural instinct belonging to the emotions, a feeling for the Divine that cannot be expressed in words of doctrinal propositions because it has no intellectual content to express, [...] an outlook of spirit that all people naturally have but some are more aware of having."

Pope St. Pius X describes the same with characteristic clarity:

For the Modernist Believer, [...] it is an established and certain fact that the Divine Reality does really exist in itself and quite independently of the person who believes in it. If you ask on what foundation this assertion of the Believer rests, they answer: in the experience of the individual. On this head the Modernists differ from the Rationalists only to fall into the opinion of the Protestants and pseudo-mystics. This is their manner of putting the question: In the religious sentiment one must recognize a kind of intuition of the heart which puts man in immediate contact with the very reality of God, and infuses such a persuasion of God's existence and His action both within and without man as to excel greatly any scientific conviction. They assert, therefore, the existence of a real experience, and one of a kind that surpasses all rational experience. If this experience is denied by some, like the rationalists, it arises from the fact that such persons are unwilling to put themselves in the moral state which is necessary to produce it. It is this experience which, when a person acquires it, makes him properly and truly a believer. (Pascendi, §14)

It should now be clear why Pope Francis regularly chastises certain segments of his flock for "lacking faith," for "failing to respond" to the "promptings of the Holy Spirit," for lacking "docility" to the Spirit which "speaks to us from within", "driving us forward" and "demanding" that we "abandon the false security" of things like defined dogma and adherence to Church law. He rails against them because they are holding fast to notions of God, Revelation, and Church which are simply incompatible with the New Pentecost. They are, after all, Catholics.

Origin of Calvinism

Sixth in a Series on the Protestant Reformation

by

Fr. Charles Coppens, S.J.

John Calvin, ca. 1560

John Calvin was a very different character from Martin Luther. Like one another in their uncommon power of intellect and strength of will, in their rejection of all authority on earth that claimed to control their independent thought, speech and action - these two standard-bearers of the Reformation were in most other respects the opposites of each other.

Luther was by nature and principle a destroyer and disorganizer in religion and morality, fond of breaking through all bonds, of throwing down all bars for himself and for other men generally; Calvin, on the contrary, had a remarkable genius for organization, and delighted in imposing bonds. He built up a novel structure of dogma and morals, tightening the yoke on the multitude, but releasing himself and a few elect souls from all fear of future punishment. We shall understand this better when we shall get acquainted with his personal history.

Calvin was born at Moyen, in Picardy, France, on July 10, 1509, when Luther, as a young monk, was beginning his professorial career at the University of Wittenberg. His father was a faithful Christian, blessed with a good wife and six children, but not with ample means for their support. Of the children, John was the most talented and the most ambitious. In the same town, the noble family of Mommors, with a charity common in Catholic times, took him into their home to be educated with their own children by a private tutor. When he was twelve years old, they sent him with two of their own sons to Paris, where John was to continue his studies for the priesthood.

While attending lectures at the great Paris University, the poor boy was lodged and supported gratis by his paternal uncle, Richard, who made an honest living as a locksmith. The boy was thus described by an early writer:

His body was dry and slender, but he already exhibited a sharp and vigorous intellect, prompt at repartee, bold in attack. He was great at fasting, he spoke but little; his language was serious and always to the point. He entered seldom into company and sought retirement.

Meanwhile, the errors of Luther, his fierce assaults on the Pope, his condemnation of penance and morals restraints, etc., had begun to attract public attention in France, and was creating a wild excitement, particularly among the students of the Paris University. Calvin was soon infected with the new spirit. While his good Uncle Richard daily attended Mass, abstained from flesh meat every Friday and Saturday, and piously told his beads daily, John had begun to scoff at such devout practices. For, already at 14, he had read some of Luther's books; he had admitted doubt and then proud contempt into his conceited mind. The influence of his principle professor at the time was in favor of the novel errors, and soon the boy was no longer a Catholic except in name.

Still, he found it his interest to conceal his sentiments, and at the age of 19, having been enrolled among the clergy by receiving the tonsure, he obtained a considerable ecclesiastical benefice, which enabled him to live on the Church without discharging any sacred duties. He never recevied the priesthood nor even the Minor Orders, though he held the title of pastor of a considerable parish.

For a while, he studied law at Orleans, where, under the tuition of an excellent master, he greatly improved in logical thought and trenchant expression; but he was never unpopular among his fellow students, with whom his habit of fault-finding earned for him the sobriquet of "the accusative case." Next, he studied at Bourges, where he made the acquaintence of Beza, Wolmar and other enthusiastic admirers of Luther. Thence he returned to Paris to complete his theological course, living all along on the income of a Church benefice, while he was maturing in his active mind the plan of his heretical system of predestination. While he paused on the brink of the precipice, he was a prey to racking torments of conscience.

At last, his mind was made up, for, to use his own words: "God, by a sudden conversion, subdued his heart and made it docile." From Audin's Life of Calvin we are led to conceive the genesis of his system in this way. He had a powerful intellect, and an iron will to execute whatever he resolved upon; but he had no love of any person but himself, no kindness, no tenderness, no pity on the miserable. Being such, he formed to himself a conception of God after his own image and likeness, a God all intellect and strength of will, but wanting in the element of goodness. This God, in Calvin's system, created the world simply to exercise His arbitrary power, without any regard to the happiness of His creatures. Some of these He predestined to be saved, happy forever, others to be lost in endless woe; without leaving any influence on their lot to either the elect of the reprobate. To the elect. God gives sooner or later an intimate conviction of their election; this pledge, once received, can never be lost. Calvin calls this conviction "faith," taking this word in a novel sense of his own. This faith prompts the happy recipients of it to lead holy lives. Those who have it not are a mass of damnation; they have nothing to gain by the practice of virtue, but they should be kept in order by the elect, by force if necessary.

Calvin, while still openly professing the Catholic religion, held conventicles at night with his secret followers, whom he indoctrinated with his new tenets. His position became dangerous. So, he sold his ecclesiastical benefice and fled to the court of Navarre, where Queen Margaret patronized the Reformation. In that kingdom, he composed the gospel of his sect, which he entitled The Christian Institutes.

We can best understand the spirit of his teachings by seeing how he reduced it to practice during the twenty-two years from 1542 to 1564, while he was all-powerful in Geneva, Switzerland. Considering himself and his partisans as the elect of God, he looked down contemptuously upon the "Libertines," as he styled the unconverted Genevese, just as the Pharisees of old used to look down upon the Publicans. In the spirit of Phariseeism, he enacted a code of the most rigid morality, and he organized a consistory to enforce it on the people. Geneva had been for generations a city of comfort, of cheerfulness and moderate conviviality, of simple pleasures and happiness. The new code abolished all public amusements, all games, all dances, all that had the appearance of frivolity. Domiciliary visits were instituted and various inquisitorial measures were taken to watch the conduct of every citizen. Offences against sanctimonious decorum, and against the very appearance of vanity, were severely punished. Thus we read that a lady was put in prison for having arranged her hair too coquettishly, so was her chambermaid for having assisted her. Imprisonment was inflicted on merchants for playing cards, on peasants for using rude language to their oxen, on burghers, for not extinguishing their lamps in the evening at the appointed hour. Such was the origin of that legislation which caused his followers in English-speaking lands to be called "Puritans," from the external purity of morals which they affected.

Calvin crushed all opposition by the severest punishments. Every word uttered against him was a crime, of which banishment was a common penalty. James Grunet, whom Calvin in open council had called a dog, and who, thus provoked, had written some threatening words against the dictator, was punished with death. All the world knows how he caused Servetus to be seized and condemned for having published, though in another land, some heretical theses against the Holy Trinity, and history blames Calvin for the public burning of the stranger.

The worst feature of Calvanism is that it presents the great, good God as an odious tyrant. What human heart can love a heartless autocrat? In our day, a strong revulsion against this leading feature of Calvanism has caused some branches of that unfortunate system to revise their creed, and return in part to the ancient doctrines of the Catholic Church.

Origin of the Anabaptists and Baptists

Fifth in a Series on the Protestant Reformation

by

Fr. Charles Coppens, S.J.

Thomas Müntzer, ca. 1520

We are not inquiring here what kind of men the Baptists are today, but what was their origin, what their early history. They state in their writings that their origin is wrapped in obscurity. But history has of late torn away the veil of many pretences, and it has done so in the present case. It is now clearly known that the Baptists have come from the Anabaptists; they have dropped the first two syllables of their original name in order to escape the odium attached to those early sectaries. The history of the Anabaptists is as well known as any ordinary event of the past four centuries.

The word anabaptist etymologically means a person who baptizes over again. It was used to designate the fact that their new doctrine held infants' baptisms to be of no avail, since the sacrament could benefit those only who desired it. Now as all Christians before the Reformation began had been baptized in their infancy, those who joined this sect were re-baptized. This error was origininated by Thomas Müntzer, the Lutheran pastor of Zwickau in Saxony, in the year 1520. He and his followers carried the principles of the Reformation to their furthest consequences: everyone was to interpret the Bible for himself, and they professed to find texts in the Sacred Volume that justified rebellion against princes as well as against bishops and popes. They were socialists, mystics, fanatics; they rejected all authority, all tradition, all control of any kind. Intoxicated with individual liberty, they went about committing such excesses, such outrages on morality, as disgraced the name of Anabaptists for all future generations.

Müntzer gave a fresh impulse and a new character to the "Peasants' War," as it was called, which was directed by him to the establishment of an ideal Christian commonwealth with communistic institutions. In 1525, his army was defeated at Frankenhausen. He was tried, condemned and executed.

But this well-deserved punishment was looked upon by the Anabaptists as a form of most unjust persecution. New associations were formed among them, new prophets and teachers arose, the propaganda was extended among the peasants and serfs of Germany, Austria and Hungary in every direction. They summarized their tenets as follows:

Impiety prevails everywhere. It is therefore necessary that a new family of holy persons be founded, enjoying, without distinction of sex, the gift of prophecy, and skilled to interpret Divine Revelation. No need of learning; for the internal law is more than the outward expression. No Christian is allowed to go to law, to hold an office in the civil government, to take an oath in a court of justice, or to possess any personal property; everything among Christians must be in common.

They went about burning all books but the Bible, and destroying all churches within their reach. Catholics are often blamed for being intolerant of heretics, for refusing them liberty of conscience. But when they saw what heresy and liberty of conscience meant during the first decades of the Reformation, how could they help being intolerant? Who, if he knows the facts, can blame them for defending their own liberty of worship, their churches, their altars, their priests, bishops and the Supreme Pontiff against all manner of insult and violence? Must a man stand by and see what is nearest and dearest to his heart outraged by mobs and fanatical leaders of mobs? I do not think the Catholics today would patiently submit to such mob violence if it were offered, and I do not know that any would expect it from high-spirited citizens.

A few years later, John of Leiden, a tailor by trade, was proclaimed King of New Zion. He put all the laws of morality, of decency and moderation at defiance. He was a tyrant to his subjects; yet, he pleased them by introducing polygamy. He pronounced anathemas against Luther as well as against the Pope of Rome. At last Munster, the capital of his kingdom, was taken in 1535; and he and others of the leaders were tortured with hot pincers till they expired.

The most fanatical of their leaders being thus removed, new prophets arose, who objected to polygamy and to other most revolting disorders. In many places, the better element among the Anabaptists prevailed, and the sect became more like the ordinary followers of the Reformation. But its name has ever since remained one of extremely bad repute, and its members have often been persecuted by other Protestant bodies. Some of them went to settle in the Netherlands, and thence passed over into England, in company with some English dissenters who had fled from the persecution in their own country, and who in Holland had taken up the main tenets of the Anabaptists. As early as 1535, we read of ten Anabaptists suffering death for their heresy under Henry VIII in England, and in 1538 of three men and one woman executed for the same opinions. Yet their tenets gradually spread, and now there are said to be about 500,000 of those sectaries in Europe; but the name Anabaptists had been changed to that of Baptists.

In America, they are far more numerous. In 1533, a colony of Welsh Anabaptists had come over to settle in Massachusetts. Here the celebrated Roger Williams undertook to defend the same errors as the Anabaptists in Europe, as far as Baptism was concerned. But instead of the lawlessness and the excesses of the early leader of the Anabaptists, he displayed a spirit of moderation and tolerance which has made him one of the most honored pioneers of religious liberty in the United States.

From the beginning of the heresy, its followers objected to the name "Anabaptists," because they said infants were incapable of receiving baptism, and therefore were not re-baptized but simply baptized when they desired it in riper age. They claimed the name Antipaedobaptists, "against the baptism of children." But the appellation was cumbersome; and, besides, the term Anabaptists was not incorrect, for the vast multitudes of Christians in all ages have considered infant baptism valid, and therefore the repeating of the ceremony in later life was an attempt to repeat baptism, to baptize over again. History has consecrated the term Anabaptists and it will no doubt remain till the end of time.

But the Baptists of the present day have another objection against the name as applied to themselves. In this, they are right. For although they are historically connected by descent of origination, and still more evidently by sameness of their leading doctrine, with the Anabaptists of Reformation times, yet, as it is a given or proper, not a common name, and the appellation has been historically disgraced, they have an undoubted right to disown it as the designation of their present organization. We respect their reasonable wishes in this matter, and therefore we have headed this essay Origin of the Anabaptists and Baptists, admitting the distinction, yet tracing both divisions to their common historical origin.

It would certainly be unjust to blame the modern branch for the wild fruit produced by older branches which are now dead and cut off. But the root of the entire tree is evil; at most, the defence can be made that the Baptist sect is the growth of human passion pruned by human reason, but it is in no sense the work of God. It is the same with many others of the early Reformation sects. Their modern members have, to a great extent, disowned the most objectionable principles of their founders. Thus, most Lutherans of the present day no longer believe in the total depravity of human nature, in the slavery of our will and the needlessness of good works. The Presbyterians, too, have recently so amended their Calvinistic profession of faith as to strike from it the most offensive tenets.

In fact, even in Luther's time, the fruit produced by the tree which he had planted had become so bad that he was forced by what he saw and heard on all sides to lament the sad results. Thus he complained, saying:

The world grows worse and worse, and becomes more wicked every day. Men are now more given to revenge, more avaricious, more devoid of mercy, less modest, and more incorrigible, in fine, more wicked than in the Papacy.

In his Table Talk, he commented thus:

One thing no less astonishing than scandalous is to see that, since the pure doctrine of the Gospel has been brought to light, the world daily grows from bad to worse.

He would willingly have corrected some of his own teachings if he could have done so without stultifying himself before the whole world.

Change We Can Believe In?

In an exceptional moment of clarity, Pope John Paul II once observed:

We see spread abroad ideas contrary to the truth which God has revealed and which the Church has always taught.  Real heresies have appeared in dogma and moral theology, stirring doubt, confusion, rebellion.  Even the liturgy has been harmed. Christians have been plunged into an intellectual and moral illuminism, a sociological Christianity, without clear dogma or objective morality.

If his words were accurate when they were first delivered, on February 6, 1981, they are doubly accurate today. Faithful Catholics around the world are still reeling from the effects of the 2014 Synod - an event during which Princes of the Church were openly discussing and debating topics which, a few short decades ago, were so far beneath the dignity of any self-respecting Catholic as to be taboo. 

No more.

How did we get here? How, in the brief span of a hundred years, did we go from the profoundly Catholic extra Ecclesia nulla salus (outside of the Church there is no salvation) to the profoundly Protestant Ecclesia semper reformanda est (the Church is always to be reformed)? Join me, if you will, on a brief historical excursus in pursuit of insight into this most pressing of questions, i.e. that regarding the instrumentalization of the Holy Spirit to sanction sweeping and persistent change in the Catholic Church.

In the late 19th century, a new strain of evangelical Protestantism - later referred to as the "Holiness Movement" - was emerging in the western world, one which placed great emphasis on a reputedly profound personal experience it referred to as "sanctification" or the "second work of grace," believed to be an outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon individuals akin to what the Holy Apostles experienced at Pentecost two millennia ago. It was from this Movement that the modern religious phenomenon known as "Pentecostalism," which promised its adherents a fuller revelation and a more direct manifestation of the Holy Spirit, was born. As Stanley Frodsham (1882-1969), a leading figure of early Pentecostalism, put it:

The Pentecostal Baptism of the Holy Spirit brings a deeper and clearer revelation of our Lord and Savior.

Almost as if to condemn these very words, His Holiness Pope Leo XIII, in his 1897 encyclical on the Holy Spirit, wrote:

This being so, no further and fuller manifestation and revelation of the Divine Spirit may be imagined or expected; for that which now takes place in the Church is the most perfect possible, and will last until that day when the Church herself, having passed through her militant career, shall be taken up into the joy of the Saints triumphing in Heaven. (Divinum illud munus, §6)

The explosive potential of this new conception of the Holy Spirit was as obvious to Pope Leo XIII as it was to the Protestants who originally proposed the idea, for it meant that anyone could claim the title of Apostle and all the authority that title deserves - namely, the power to decide the true meaning of Christ's words, to discern the authentic application of His commandments, and to define the structure and governance of His Church. In essence, it was a means whereby one could "reset" the Church and all she teaches, taking her, as it were, back to Apostolic times, effectively wiping out her history. And it could all be done with the seeming sanction of Our Blessed Lord, who Himself had promised to send us the Holy Spirit, who would "teach us all truth" (John 16:13). For anyone who wanted to subvert well-established Church teaching - and they were legion at the turn of the last century - the doctrine of Pentecostalism was a most fortuitous blessing. 

Thus, despite the unambiguous rejection by Pope Leo XIII, the idea of a "new outpouring of divine grace," even a "new Pentecost," had gained considerable traction in certain Catholic circles by the early 20th century. It became a veritable buzzword in Rome and beyond when Pope John XXIII, in preparation for the Second Vatican Council, made the following prayer to Almighty God:

Renew Your wonders in this, our day, as by a new Pentecost. Grant to Your Church that, being of one mind and steadfast in prayer with Mary, the Mother of Jesus, and following the lead of Blessed Peter, it may advance the reign of our Divine Savior, the reign of truth and justice, the reign of love and peace. Amen.

The rest, as they say, is history. A mere half-century after that historic prayer, the notion of a "new Pentecost" has become so ingrained in post-Conciliar thinking that, for many, it is part and parcel of Catholicism, and the future of the Church is unthinkable without it. In the words of the former President of the Pontifical Council for the Laity - and the current President of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelization - Cardinal Stanislaw Rylko:

One thing, however, is certain: the face of the Church of the third millennium depends on our capacity to listen to what the Spirit is saying to the Church of our time. [...] It depends, therefore, on our capacity to be amazed by the charismatic gifts that the Holy Spirit is lavishing on the Church today with extraordinary generosity.

It is not a coincidence, gentle reader, that the most "progressive" among the clergy are those who are the most vigorous in their support for Catholic Pentacostalism - or, Charismatic Catholicism, as it is called these days. Some are quite vocal in their support. Others are a bit more subtle. 

As for the subtle type, we might take Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Germany for example. When explaining what he means when he says, "I believe in the Apostolic Church," he revealed the following:

"Apostolic" means that we believe those who first undertook the journey, those who traveled the path from the Easter experience: the Apostles. And we believe that the bishops are the successors of the Apostles. This is, of course, a pretty bold claim. Why is this claim made? To make clear that we are connected to the origins, that we do not make the Church anew, that we do not start at zero, pick up a sheet of paper and say, "Now we shall invent the Church of our dreams." Rather, we enter the long journey of the People of God at the Gospel, at the point of origin. The Apostles represent this loyalty to the origins.

Note well that, for the Cardinal, to believe that the Church is "apostolic" means to believe that we are connected "to the origins," conveniently skipping over the last 2,000 years of apostolic lineage. I imagine we are supposed to feel something like relief when Cardinal Marx explains that he does not want to start tabula rasa, as though this is sufficient proof of his fidelity to the Church. On the contrary, gentle reader, this represents a programmatic change. Gone are the days of genuine apostlic succession, of carefully guarding the hard-won fruits of so many generations of labor in the vineyard; this is to be a church in which we are forever starting, not from the absolute, but from the apostolic zero, pushing 'reset' with every generation, connecting with the "point of origin" so as to better meet the "challenges of the age" under the "sign of the times." There is no cause for relief here; on the contrary, we should be positively outraged, not only at his intentional overlooking of two millennia of authentic doctrinal development, but more properly so at his thinly veiled suggestion that, upon his being raised to the episcopate, he has received his mandate directly from the hand of Christ, and not from the hands of his many saintly predecessors in the Faith. But in doing so, I suspect we would very likely demonstrate that we are not sufficiently inspired by the Holy Spirit. As Cardinal Marx recently commented on the orthodox blow-back he and Cardinal Kasper experienced at the 2014 Synod

When, in a process of reform, one places people and positions in the categories of "victor" and "vanquished," such a one prevents us from being infected and surprised by the Holy Spirit. 

Where have we heard of this "Holy Spirit, God of Surprises" before? Ah, yes. And that brings us to the more obvious type of supporter.

In his opening address to the Synod Fathers, Pope Francis remarked:

God's dream always clashes with the hypocrisy of some of his servants. We can thwart God's dream if we fail to let ourselves be guided by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit gives us that wisdom which surpasses knowledge, and enables us to work generously with authentic freedom and humble creativity.

Are you taking notes, gentle reader? If so, please do underline that the Holy Spirit enables us to be "generous," "free" and "creative." He does not help in the defense of orthodoxy, He does not lead to a genuine appreciation and guarding of Tradition, and He most certainly does not inspire anyone to admonish sinners and correct errors. That only creates division - and we all know where that comes from.

In what has to be one of the most revealing of his homilies to date, Pope Francis recently laid out in surprising clarity his vision of the Church: she is a barren woman, and unless she opens herself to the "Holy Spirit, God of Surprises," she will remain barren:

The Church is a mother and becomes a mother only when she opens herself to the newness of God, to the power of the Spirit. [...] The Church is barren when she believes she can do it all, that she can take over the consciences of the people, going the way of the Pharisees, of the Sadducees, on the path of hypocrisy. [...] She must allow herself to be startled by the Holy Spirit.

The entire homily is very much worth reading and pondering. If you're pressed for time, however, add the following to your list of notes: Holy Spirit = expect startling newness, you barren, gossipy hag.

The logical conclusion of this line of thinking was succinctly summarized by Fr. Peter Knott, S.J., in his book The Keys to the Council (2012):

If one conceives of the Catholic Church exclusively as a reality instituted by Christ two thousand years ago, substantive change will generally be viewed as a departure from the will of Christ. However, if one conceives of the Church as not only instituted by Christ in the past but also perpetually constituted by the Holy Spirit in each present moment, then change and reform might be viewed, not as a departure from the will of Christ, but as a fidelity to the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Authentic reform and renewal will always be a response to the promptings of the Spirit in ever-changing historical and cultural contexts. [...] For example, calls for Church reform frequently seek more structures that would allow Church leaders to consult the faithful on a variety of matters from pastoral policy to Church doctrine. Now, many object that such a proposal for reform mistakenly presumes that the Church is a democracy. Indeed, were this call for reform motivated by nothing more than an effort to transform the Church into a liberal democracy, it could well be illegitimate. But, in fact, this reform proposal is oriented toward greater fidelity to the Church's identity as a temple of the Holy Spirit. In pursuing such reform, the Church would become a community of discernment, a community in which its leaders would be dedicated to seeking out the voice of the Spirit.

As Fr. Knott makes clear, this new pneumatology would allow any prelates intent on changing Church teaching to subvert virtually any practice - and, by extension, nearly any doctrine - at will, provided he can make it appear to be at the promptings of the Holy Spirit. The average Catholic, being relatively ignorant of magisterial teaching on the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, is reluctant to offer resistance in the face of novelties being proposed in His Name. And if such a novelty has the blessing of a reigning pope: who is he to judge? Little does he know that the dogmatic constitution which promulgated papal infallibility explicitly states that the Pope does not have the power to declare a new doctrine, even - and specifically - if it should appear to come at the behest of the Holy Spirit:

For the Holy Spirit was promised to the Successors of Peter not so that they might, by His revelation, make known some new doctrine, but that, by His assistance, they might religiously guard and faithfully expound the revelation or deposit of faith transmitted by the Apostles. (Constitutio Dogmatica Prima de Ecclesia Christi (Pastor Aeternus), Cap. IV, §6)

The prescience of Blessed Pope Pius IX is downright spooky at times. But, really, why should anyone pay any attention to such an ancient document? 1870? My goodness, that thing is over a hundred years old! It can't possibly be part of the "new Pentecost."

Brace yourself, gentle reader, for an unrelenting stream of homilies and speeches leading up to the 2015 Synod on how we all need to 'become attentive to the promptings of the Holy Spirit,' how He is 'calling us' to 'new and unexpected destinations' well beyond the 'confines' of 'doctrinal security,' punctuated by the occasional snide remark - offered in all humility, mind you - on those 'sour-faced whited sepulchers' who would keep the Church 'in the past' by remaining obstinately 'fixed on,' nay, 'obsessed with' the commandments of Christ. Brace yourself, and mediate on the words of Our Blessed Lord:

If you love me, keep My commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he shall give you another Paraclete, that He may abide with you for ever: the Spirit of Truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth Him not, nor knoweth Him. But you shall know Him, because He shall abide with you, and shall be in you. I will not leave you orphans, I will come to you. Yet a little while, and the world seeth Me no more. But you see Me, because I live, and you shall live. In that day you shall know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you. He that hath My commandments, and keepeth them: he it is that loveth Me. And he that loveth Me shall be loved of My Father, and I will love Him, and will manifest Myself to Him. (John 14:15-21)

Lutheranism Propagated

Fourth in a Series on the Protestant Reformation

by

Fr. Charles Coppens, S.J.

Martin Luther, ca. 1545

We have seen how Luther, under the pretense of attacking some abuses existing in his day, had gradually been emboldened by his success in arousing popular passions, and had proceeded so far as to proclaim an entirely new scheme of salvation, which, as he admitted, had never before been the doctrine of the Church. He claimed that he had been taught his Gospel directly by Heaven, and that he had been commissioned to preach to the people that his was the only means of salvation. How did he succeed in gaining millions of men to abandon their ancestral Catholic faith, and accept him as the reformer of the old religion? This we are now briefly to explain.

First, we must remember that he did not begin by preaching openly a novel creed. He claimed at first only to be the spokesman of many Catholics, clergy and laity, princes and people, who complained of some scandalous extortions of money for pretended holy purposes, which were said to enrich Rome and the Pope at the expense of Germany. This complaint stirred up passions the more violently because the preceding Pope, Julius II, had rescued Italy from German domination. The Germans nourished a grudge against the Popes.

Luther complained also of abuses which happened to be connected with the preaching of an indulgence; and he but gradually made bold to attack the doctrine itself. Many causes were conspiring at the time in Germany to alienate its people more and more entirely from the See of Rome.

There was first the Humanist movement. This had arisen from the influx of Grecian teachers of literature, who had come West in large numbers, especially when Constantinople was captured by the Muslims in 1454. The enthusiasm created by them for the study of the ancient classics had infatuated the educated generally with admiration for pagan ideals, and substituted the love of elegant language for the former appreciation of Christian truth. It had fostered a worldly spirit, even among the clergy, and had made the simplicity of former ages contemptible. Pride of intellect is most unfavorable to the spirit of faith and submission to Divine authority. It craves for independence of the judgment.

A large portion of the Humanists welcomed Luther as their champion in the cause of intellectual freedom. They wrote to him to express their approbation and to promise support for his attacks on Rome. Janssen says of them: "In their struggle against scholastic learning and ecclesiastical authority, the latter [the Humanists] welcomes this audacious reformer, and entered the lists for him." Quoting a reliable contemporary of Luther, the same author adds:

With their lips and their pens, the Humanists fought unweariedly for Luther, and disposed the hearts of the laity towards his cause. They attacked the prelates and theologians with all manner of abusive and derisive language, accused them of covetousness, pride, envy, ignorance, and coarseness, and said that they only persecuted the innocent Luther because he was more learned than themselves, and because he had sufficient candor to speak out the truth in opposition to the deceit and falsehood of hypocrites. As these Humanists, besides being shrewd and gifted men, could also use both spoken and written language with eloquence and skill, it was an easy matter for them to excite pity and regard for Luther among the laity, and to make out that, for the sake of truth and justice, he was persecuted by a set of envious, grasping, unlearned clergy, who, living themselves in idleness and debauchery, endeavored to get money out of the poor silly people by wokring on their superstitions (V. III. p. 101).

Unfortunately Erasmus, the greatest scholar of the day, though he never became a Protestant, wrote most enthusiastically in commendation of Luther till he found out the further purposes of the heresiarch. He and his fellow Humanists were like the Higher Critics of today, many of whom are Rationalists rather than Christians; some of them even questioned the immortality of the soul. It was such men who hailed Luther as the liberator of the human mind from the slavery of religious authority.

No period in history could have been more favorable to the rapid spread of novel views among the learned classes, and in the awakening minds of the common people, than was the first half of the sixteenth century. The recent invention of printing had created an extraordinary ferment of thought, and Luther eagerly seized upon the press to address the whole German nation. His style was powerful and most popular, unsparing in denunciation of wrong and of restraint on liberty of speech and thought. Janssen says:

The sale of Lutheran books was enormous, and side-by-side with them appeared thousands of leaflets, satires and pasquils, which struck at all existing institutions of Church and State. In no other period of German history did revolutionary journalism acquire such importance and such wide circulation as at that time. Crowds of adherents flocked round Luther, not from any preference for his religious opinions, but, as Melanchton explains, because they looked upon him as the restorer of liberty, under which name each one understood the removal of whatever stood in his own way, and the attainment of the particular form of happiness he individually wished for. Many of his supporters were actuated by no other motive than the love of destroying. By speech and by pen they labored for the destruction of social order, and undermined through all classes of society all respect for the inward restraints of religion and conscience, and the outward control of the law. (Ib. p. 104)

The party of Luther was immensely increased by the easy morality implied in his doctrine. If faith alone can save us, then there is no more need of confession, of fasting and penance to obtain pardon of sin, no need of sorrow and reform of life. No more good works were demanded, for all our acts, even the best, were only new sins. No more accountability for our actions, for we are not free in our choice; if God mounts the soul, Luther said, he rides it to Heaven; but if the devil bestrides it, he rides it to hell. Yet there is no fear of hell for anyone, if only he believes firmly that Christ has paid the full ransom for his individual sins, they are all covered by the cloak of His merits, and at death that man goes straight to Heaven. All this followed logically from his premises, and much of it is taught explicitly in his work On the Slave Will.

Another seduction was the free scope given to the human intellect, for each one was to read the Bible and judge for himself. It was like a general intoxication of passion and independence. And all this was declared to be, not only a safe way, but the only safe way to eternal happiness.

All that remained to be done in order to complete the total separation from Rome was the favor and cooperation of the temporal princes. To secure this, Luther offered them the seizure of all the churches and monasteries of their respective lands, with the gold and silver ornaments, and precious stones and rich vestments that the piety of many ages had bestowed upon the worship of God. Wheresoever Lutheranism was accepted by the rulers, all those treasures were eagerly seized by them to enrich them and their friends. And once possessed of the Church lands and other property of the kind, the princely robbers found it to be their interest to foster and maintain the new religion, lest they might have to restore their ill-gotten goods.

In a couple of years, the demoralization was complete. On March 28, 1523, Luther issued an appeal to the Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights, urging him with all the religious of that Order, to set aside their sacred vows, contract sacrilegious marriages, and divide the monastic lands and treasures among themselves. He added:

I have no doubt that many bishops also, and many abbots, and other ecclesiastical dignitaries would marry if they were not afraid of being the first.

Most of the Knights yielded to the temptation, and many priests, monks and nuns followed their bad example. Luther himself married a nun, Catherine Bora, both breaking their solemn vows, which they had taken at the sacred altars.

A torrent of impiety was poured forth over the land; the change made in his followers is well exemplified by what he admits had taken place in his own person. For he wrote that, while a Catholic, he had passed his life in austerities, in watchings, in fasts and praying, in poverty, chastity and obedience; but after his change of religion he declared that, as it did not depend upon him not to be a man, so neither did it depend upon him to without a woman, and that he could no longer forego the indulgence of the vilest natural propensities. Meanwhile he was ill at ease in his inmost heart. He wrote frequently to various friends. To one he says:

Many people think, because in the intervals I am cheerful in my outward bearing, that I live on a bed of roses, but God knows what my real life is.

He was incessantly at war with his own conscience, and, according to his own confession, he sought relief in those fits of despair which often frightened his friends, in incessant drinking, in card-playing and conviviality, or else in outbursts of vindictive fury against the Church, its teachings and institutions, especially against the Pope.

For the last fifteen years of his life, he usually passed the evenings at the Black Eagle tavern of Wittenberg, where he conversed over the ale jug with his boon companions, Melanchton, Armsdorf, Aurifaber, Justus, Jonas, Lange, Link, Staupiz and others. Two of these published select morsels of this Table Talk, Tischrede, which their vile tastes admired; but the book reveals in Luther a heart so coarse, so corrupt, so lustful, spiteful, proud, resentful, etc., as to revolt and horrify the reader. Happily the English language has so far refused to reproduce those profanities, except in brief extracts and expurgated editions. His language against the Supreme Pontiff is like the ravings of a maniac or the curses of an energumen. How much further he would have dragged down the standard of public morals if he had lived longer, we do not know, but certain it is that, in 1539, the year before his death, he allowed Philip, the Landgrave of Hesse, to marry a second wife while the first wife remained married with him. Here is an extract from the lengthy document he sent to Philip on that occasion:

As to what your highness says, that it is not possible to you to abstain from this impure life, we wish you were in a better state before God. [...] But, after all, if your highness is fully resolved to marry a second wife, we judge it ought to be done secretly. [...] Yout highness has, therefore, in this writing, the approbation of us all, in case of necessity, concerning what you desire.

The lengthy document is printed in full in an appendix to the History of the Reformation by Bishop Spalding. It is signed by Martin Luther, Melanchton, Bucer and five other leaders of the new religion.

Here are facts enough about the origin of Lutheranism to show that is author was not a man of God, and his work was not the work of God. Present members of the Lutheran religion are not guilty of their founder's sins, because they have been born three hundred years after his death. The majority of them do not even know these facts nor even the early tenets of their sect. But once they know better, they must return to the one Church of Christ if they wish for salvation; and it is not harshness but charity to tell them so.