The new face of holiness!
In the immediate reactions to Gaudete et Exsultate, which I shall hereafter refer to as G&E, two reasonable objections to it were quite specific: the pope's attack
on those he calls neo-Gnostics and neo-Pelagians within the Church - because of their adherence to orthodoxy; and his placing a moral equivalence between
opposing abortion and opposing indiscriminate immigration. Indeed, he ends up calling his 'neo-gnostics and neo-pelagians' heretics - they're the heretics, not
he, whom they accuse of heresy or near-heresy! In which case, Benedict XVI would be the most heretical of all these heretics, despite the absence
of any direct opposition from him of his successor's heterodoxies (to say the least) - because everything he taught was contrary to most of
Bergoglio's 'magisterial' obsessions. Not having bothered to read G&E at all, I came to that conclusion from reading Fr. Scalese's commentary below on just
that aspect of G&E contained in Chapter 2 of the document.
A pope should be above partisanship
[But in 'Gaudete et Exsultate', Bergoglio turns the tables
on his opponents within the Church and calls them the heretics
(for being neo-gnostic and or neo-pelagian by his criteria)]
Translated from
May 4, 2018
We’ve known for a while that Gnosticism and Pelagianism - and what he considers their present manifestations among Catholics – are a form of battlehorse for Pope Francis.
[Mere ‘straw men’, in my opinion, imaginary and unsubstantial, and therefore unlikely to be a ‘battlehorse’ in any way.]
- He mentioned them in the programmatic document of his pontificate, Evangelii Gaudium (No.94).
- He mentioned them in his address to the Fifth National Covnention of the Italian Church in Florence on November 10, 2015.
- And in the numberless jabs he has been making, especially against ‘the new pelagians’ in his morning homilettes at Casa Santa Marta.
Last February, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith published the letter
Placuit Deo on some aspects of Christian salvation, from which I had the impression that it was intended to somehow give a theological foundation to the pope’s insistence on his twinned themes of neo-gnosticism and neo-pelagianism by showing their tendentiously heretical character. Thus, I thought that this would close the question once and for all.
But lo and behold, on April 9, his apostolic exhortation Gaudete et exsultate was published, a call to holiness in the contemporary world, in which, however, the pope re-opened the issue, dedicating an entire chapter to what he calls ‘Two subtle enemies of holiness’, namely Gnosticism and Pelagianism in today’s world – 28 paragraphs out of a total 177, or 16 % of the document, which is significant.
I do not wish to speak now of that exhortation in its entirety. I will only say that the topic of the exhortation was a pleasant surprise since it does not usually come up in this pope’s habitual discourse. But it’s probably not to be wondered at since the pope is a Jesuit. And the Jesuit in Jorge Mario Bergoglio comes out strongly in this exhortation.
Just think of his invitation in the now much-discussed paragraph 26, to be ‘contemplative in action’ or to his many references to St. Ignatius of Loyola
(Nos, 20, 69, 153 and Note 124), or to the topics treated in the last chapter (fight against the devil, discernment, examination of conscience), familiar to do those who have any awareness at all of Ignatius’s spiritual exercises.
But what I wish to dwell on exclusively in this post is what the exhortations says about gnosticism and pelagianism. As I had said, I was convinced that with
Placuit Deo, we could now consider the argument on these two topics definitively closed. But now, the pope has decided to return to it and in a rather ample manner, almost as if all his previous pronouncements plus
Placuit Deo were insufficient to make clear what he thinks about them.
One has to say Pope Francis is generally quite repetitive and not just on these twin topics. And one can understand why, for two reasons: first, because it is inevitable when one has to speak everyday, since it is impossible to invent something new to say everyday; and second, because it can be a deliberate technique to inculcate some concepts which he considers important.
But I, being malicious, suspect that in the pope’s decision to return to the controversy after just two months since
Placuit Deo, there is something else. I have the impression that, so to speak,
‘Placuit Deo’ non placuit papae – [the document about] what pleases God did not please the pope. It would seem that the pope was not happy about the CDF document and therefore he decided to personally take it up again, as if to say:
“Now let me show you how I would have written that letter (Placuit Deo)!”
What led me to think this was something reported by the
National Catholic Register to the effect that G&E was sent to the CDF for review only at the last minute, which did not allow the CDF to make a commentary at all. It would seem then that the replacement of Cardinal Mueller with Archbishop Ladaria, a Jesuit, as Prefect, has not really made relations between the CDF and Casa Santa Marta any better.
[Neither Bergoglio nor his paladins have ever made it a secret that they would happily do without the CDF, but how does he go about abolishing what has always been the Vatican's premier dicastery regardless of the name it went by? He can't without incriminating himself formally for his disregard of doctrine in favor of pastoral 'expediencies'. So he does the next best thing, which is to ignore it altogether, except for CYA purposes on the subject of clerical sex abuses. Surely even Mons. Ladaria realizes that the CDF now exists only pro forma, a cover Bergoglio uses to affirm his 'orthodoxy' in the face of all evidence to the contrary.]
Indeed,
Placuit Deo – contrary to what Fr. Giuseppe Cavalcoli maintains in his blog where he places G&E on a par with St. Pius X’s encyclical against Modernism,
Pascendi domenici gregis (Feeding the Lord’s flock), seeing in it opposition to Lutheranism, modernism, Rahnerism, Lefebvrism and liberation theology, which I believe are totally absent – is a document with a rather frail framework.
Not because what it affirms is wrong (its contents are 100% orhotodx), but simply because it does not achieve the goal that the pope had intended for it: namely, to give a theological foundation to his arguments against contemporary gnosticism and pelagianism.
I think that the CDF officials did the task assigned to them quite diligently: they issued a brief tract on Christian salvation, reiterating what the CDF itself had affirmed in the 2000 declaration
Dominus Iesus on the uniqueness of Christ as Savior and on the salvific mediation of the Church.
But when they wished to treat about Gnosticism and Pelagianism in detail, they could only go as far as underscoring the profound differences between the contemporary situation and that during the first Christian centuries, implying thereby that t
he application of the two terms to current tendencies can only be done in an analogous manner, and not directly:
“3. Pope Francis, in his ordinary magisterium, often has made reference to the two tendencies described above, that resemble certain aspects of two ancient heresies, Pelagianism and Gnosticism. A new form of Pelagianism is spreading in our days, one in which the individual, understood to be radically autonomous, presumes to save oneself, without recognizing that, at the deepest level of being, he or she derives from God and from others.
According to this way of thinking, salvation depends on the strength of the individual or on purely human structures, which are incapable of welcoming the newness of the Spirit of God.
On the other hand, a new form of Gnosticism puts forward a model of salvation that is merely interior, closed off in its own subjectivism. In this model, salvation consists in elevating oneself with the intellect beyond “the flesh of Jesus towards the mysteries of the unknown divinity”.
It thus presumes to liberate the human person from the body and from the material universe, in which traces of the provident hand of the Creator are no longer found, but only a reality deprived of meaning, foreign to the fundamental identity of the person, and easily manipulated by the interests of man.
Clearly, the comparison with the Pelagian and Gnostic heresies intends only to recall general common features, without entering into judgments on the exact nature of the ancient errors. In fact, there is a great difference between modern, secularized society and the social context of early Christianity, in which these two heresies were born.
However, insofar as Gnosticism and Pelagianism represent perennial dangers for misunderstanding the biblical faith, it is possible to find similarities between the ancient heresies and the modern tendencies just described.” (No. 3)
What else can this mean? It is obvious that the link between the two contemporary tendencies so decried by this pope and the old heresies is extremely tenuous – and that therefore, the application of the terms Gnosticism and Pelagianism to current tendencies is significantly problematic.
It would seem that the modern terms ‘spiritualism’ and ‘individualism’ are more appropriate, but using these terms would minimize the gravity the pope wishes to attribute to these tendencies by naming them after the ancient heresies.
In G&E, the pope treats these issues in a completely different way. He refers to
Placuit Deo only in Note 33 to say that “they present the doctrinal bases for understanding Christian salvation in terms of the neo-Gnostic and neo-Pelagian trends today”. Yet it is interesting to note that the statement in G&E to which Note 33 applies (“It expresses an anthropocentric immanentism in the guise of Catholic truth”) is
not at all found in Placuit Deo.
The treatment of Gnosticism and Pelagianism in G&E is far more substantial than what one finds in
Placuit Deo. It is also a more colloquial presentation – in the style to which this pope has accustomed us, characterized by cutting and colorful expressions – but replete with numerous biblical, patristic and ecclesiastic references (Note particularly the description of Pelagianism in Paragprahs 49-56). The pope presents Gnosticism and Pelagianism as the ‘enemies of holiness’ (which is the title of the chapter); as ‘falfisifications of holiness’, ‘deceptive propositions’, ‘forms of doctrinal or disciplinary security’ (No. 35); ‘deviations’ (No. 62); ‘drift’ (No. 33); without failing to refer to them ‘heresies’ (Nos. 35 and 47).
Prof. Claudio Pierantoni, in an interview with
National Catholic Register, underscores that the gnostics and pelagians described by the pope in G&E do not have the characteristics of the ancient gnostics and pelagians, but those of their theological adversaries:
[Pope Francis, being the object of reasonable accusations that he supports situational ethics, and that he has refused to answer the DUBIA about AL and other questions and observations having to do with his many controversial statements – is now making the ridiculous accusation that Catholics who have such questions are for whatever obscure reasons, also ‘gnostics’. It means that he considers them not only heretics but ‘adherents of one of the worst ideologies”.
According to Pierantoni, G&E, in effect, is a sort of counter-attack by the Pope against his opponents. If the document is read in the context of the many controversies in the Church today, especially those over AL and situational ethics, one has the strong impression that many passages in G&E are intended expressly as a severe reproach to
[condemnation of!] all those persons (cardinals, bishops, priests, theologians, scholars, Catholic bloggers) who oppose the Bergoglian agenda of giving Communion to remarried divorcees and Protestants, of permitting contraception in certain cases, of merely token opposition or suspicious silence in the face of Italian legislative initiatives against the family and against life (in favor of abortion, euthanasia, birth control, and same-sex ‘marriage’).
I do not know if Prof. Pierantoni is right. But I say that
the mere fact that a respectable Catholic theologian could even raise such a suspicion is not a good sign. Especially because it means that the children – some of them, at least – have lost trust in the father (the pope), but also because if this is so, then it is because the father himself, one way or another, caused this situation, or at the very least, created the opportunity for the situation to arise.
In any case, he who ought to be the father of all, above and beyond any parties to controversies within the Church, has become an active partisan himself, battling against some of his children. It will be said: There have always been controversies in the Church, and popes have always fought against heresies. That is true.
But the present situation is different. In the course of centuries, the Church has always condemned doctrines – but now, the impression is that the fight is against persons, specifically not against the enemies of the Church, but against those Catholics who profess to be and are acting as sons of the Church.
Let me take just two examples from G&E – one about ‘gnostics’ and one on ‘the new pelagians’:
"I am not referring to a rationalism inimical to Christian faith. It can be present within the Church, both among the laity in parishes and teachers of philosophy and theology in centres of formation… They absolutize their own theories and force others to submit to their way of thinking.” (No. 39)
“It can affect groups, movements and communities, and it explains why so often they begin with an intense life in the Spirit, only to end up fossilized… or corrupt.” (No. 58)
He is not condemning any doctrine here but is judging persons. Sincerely,
I do not understand this verbal hounding against those who, until otherwise proven, are sons of the Church – perhaps he thinks they are errant – but towards whom, precisely, the pope ought to show patience and charity.
It will be said: even Jesus was not gentle with the scribes and the pharisees. But Jesus could do this, being someone who "knew them all, and did not need anyone to testify about human nature. He himself understood it well”
(Jn 2,24-25).
It may well be that my idea of the papacy is now outdated - I do not think that a pope should engage in polemics with his own ‘children’. He should be above that.
Without a doubt, I would prefer the Bergoglio who, as pope and Jesuit, speaks of magnanimity as he does in G&E No. 169, or in his 2013 interview with La Civilta Cattolica
[Actually, the ff passage cited by Fr Scalese came in the pope’s address to students of Jesuit schools in Italy and Albania in June 2013, months before the Civilta interview]:
I was always struck by a maxim that describes St. Ignatius’s vision: Non coerceri maximo contineri minimo, divinum est - Not to be confined by the greatest, yet to be contained within the smallest, is divine. What does being magnanimous mean? It means having a great heart, having greatness of mind; it means having great ideals, the wish to do great things to respond to what God asks of us. Hence also, for this very reason, to do well the routine things of every day and all the daily actions, tasks, meetings with people; doing the little everyday things with a great heart open to God and to others. It is to appreciate the small things within the great horizon, that of the Kingdom of God.
The great Winston Churchill had an aphorism that encompasses the exercise of magnanimity: "In war, resolution. In defeat, defiance. In victory, magnanimity. In peace, good will".
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 06/05/2018 14:45]